


Be The Hero

by orphan_account



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Genre: Alternative Universe - ATLA powers with MDZS characters, Angst with a Happy Ending, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, POV Alternating, Slow Burn, i wrote this to prove to myself that i'm not allergic to writing happy endings we'll see, i'm sorry everybody's horribly OOC, no one's favorite character is gonna die... unless you really like Su She or something, starring: some negative IQ mini-villains, uh... no characters from ATLA but i take liberally from the setting?!?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:07:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23938150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Lan Zhan almost died as a baby, was brought back by the Moon Spirit, and as a remainder of his near-death, had his hair turned pure white ever after. Seventeen years later, a seer announces that he isTHE CHOSEN ONE ™the Bearer of Light and must vanquish the Bearer of Darkness to stop the Cloud of Darkness that threatens to engulf the world in darkness (wow that's a mouthful :'). And so, Lan Zhan sets off on his quest in search ofThe AvatarI mean, Wei Ying.Meanwhile, Wei Ying, the Bearer of Darkness, resides in Yiling as a part-time radish farmer. He hears about Lan Zhan's quest and decides, well, he's horribly outmatched in terms of manpower and will likely die a terrible, painful death, so why not try to sneak into his encampment and become his new BFF? And if they cannot become friends, then gaining intel about his potential arch-nemesis is good too.Shenanigans ensue and Lan Zhan's previously calcified views about the world shifts.
Relationships: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn
Comments: 67
Kudos: 151





	1. The Bearer of Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will be... ~10 chapters?!? I think?!? 
> 
> I'm going to write some crappy action scenes & smut at the very end, because I almost never write action and I've never written smut, so this'll be practice. 
> 
> I know I definitely have capitalization issues and I'm iffy on when to use past perfect vs simple past tenses... AHHH grammar.

Lan Zhan would save the world. The head seer at the Northern Water Temples prophesied that he would save the world from the encroaching Cloud of Darkness. He bore the power of The Light. All he needed to do was end his counterpart who bore the power of The Darkness. 

Then, everything would be better. The crops would grow better and herds of cattle would stop dying mysteriously. 

(So, why, then did he feel so empty at the thought of his journey?)

He sat in lotus position on a silky cushion atop an ornate rosewood pedestal before a crowd of thousands. They cheered in celebration for the dawn of a new era and threw flower petals up into the air. Some people left offerings at the foot of his pedestal. 

But no one dared to look him in the eye or tried to make conversation with him. 

(The younger acolytes who didn't know the ways of the temple were severely disciplined and knew to never make the mistake again. That was fine -- nothing they said was particularly interesting or useful. He didn't have time for trifling conversation without a purpose. It was all irritating, abrasive, sand to his ears. 

On a level above his was where the elders of the temple sat. They were so old that they had looked elderly when his grandparents had been but swaddled babies. No one knew how old they were.)

If he was to be the light, then he needed to take in only beautiful sights and sounds, only virtuous and intelligent conversation, only wise and proper people. 

When had been a baby, he had almost died and so his father and uncle had placed him in the temple's healing pool and begged The Water Spirit for a divine intervention. The spirit must have heard their pleas, because he was given life once again but different. 

His hair turned to pure white and his body gleamed with a faint light. 

After that, no one was ever allowed to touch him directly ever again. Everything had to be done with gloves on, through multiple sheets of fabric, through waterbending. 

No, Lan Zhan knew why he was irritated. His older brother always visited him once a day and sometimes, when there was no one around, he would slip him a candy and tell him about his day. 

The entire temple was a-buzz with preparation for sending him off, so his brother must be busy. He would come. 

He emptied his mind of thoughts and sank into his familiar meditation. 

An hour passed. 

Then another. 

His brother wasn't coming? He touched his headband and tried to think of positive thoughts. 

If he didn't come now, they wouldn't have time tomorrow during the ceremonies. His brother would accompany them during his quest -- it had been his one and only selfish request -- but they wouldn't get any opportunity to converse alone. 

With a sinking heart, he gestured to his attendants. They hoisted up his palanquin painted with a blue sky and white clouds and he entered with a heavy heart.

* * *

The parting ceremony took place before The Water Tribe's Royal Palace. The palace was a tiered pyramid carved out of packed snow. Around the palace was a pool of water, traversable by a bridge, that ended in a series of spectacular waterfalls. There were people from all four great nations here, because The Cloud of Darkness threatened everyone. 

He sat on a pedestal on top of the stairs and waited for his cue to give a speech. He had memorized it, of course, and gone over it with all the proper authorities and made all the allusions to the proper texts and histories. 

The temple priest made a long-winded speech about the need for unity in this time of strife. He made veiled references to the Fire Nation's growing ambitions of conquest and the crowd grew hushed. A small group of Fire Nation people booed at the priest. 

Then came the performances by singers, dancers, and players of instruments. They were all very skilled and elegant, but Lan Zhan felt nothing stir within him. His favorite musical performance was by a peasant girl who played the dizi. She played a song about the cowherd and the weaver girl, and the composition was an original that he had never heard before. 

His brother gave him a look -- the signal. He got up and stood before the podium. 

"One score ago, my father, the previous Bearer of Light, rode out from these self-same steps. After much courageous fighting, my father returned home with grievous injuries. The Bearer of Darkness was heavily wounded as well, but they were devious and cunning, and so, they fled for another body. 

I swear to you, Earth Nation, Fire Nation, Water Tribes, Air Nomads, that I have learned from the errors of my father's ways. I will bring back this vile creature's head and I will present it here for all to see! The darkness will not be our end but a new beginning!" 

The crowd cheered ecstatically, the energy all unwound like the removal of a dam before a blockade. He strode down the stairs with his perfect poise, his gait never making a sound. He strode past the rushing waterfalls and past the restless crowds, never moving his eyes from their fixed position. 

In one fluid motion, he got onto his pale stallion, leaned forward until the horse was in canter, and then they galloped off into the unknown with a company of men and horses behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh! Uh, worldbuilding:
> 
> Everyone in this setting is a bender and they can bend multiple elements, but everyone has one that they gravitate towards more.
> 
> There's also the extremely rare elements of light and darkness that can be bended (bent?).
> 
> The powers of light can be used to:  
> \- create illusions  
> \- as a flash grenade  
> \- make living things healthier, live longer  
> \- communicate w/ unborn spirits
> 
> The powers of darkness can:  
> \- make things decay, die quicker  
> \- communicate w/ dead spirits, control them  
> \- envelope an area in darkness  
> \- limited control over sentient beings (think Shikamaru from Naruto)
> 
> \+ more if you're inventive and these powers can be combined w/ the other elements


	2. The Bearer of Darkness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wei Ying does some business and sets off in search of Friendship™

"Miss, would you like the deluxe package with my flock of man-eating crows or the regular without?" Wei Ying flicked at the well-worn cardboard paper with all the pricing and brought it up before her face. A pencil was stuck behind his left ear. "Or would you prefer a horde of corpses instead?" 

He didn't put the pricing up in front of his humble abode, because that was just asking for trouble. This whole scaring-off-boyfriends-stalkers-etc-etc business was just a side gig. Most of the time, he was just a common radish farmer who did strange jobs on the side. 

It would not do to attract attention. He left Yunmeng, his parents, Yanli, Jiang Cheng, Uncle Jiang, and everyone else to keep them safe. If he were found, they could be traced back to him.

The woman, who had prominent red eyes and swollen bags under her eyes, pulled out a pen and paper from her coin purse and crunched some numbers. 

"The regular, I guess." 

"That'll be two hundred yuan, please." He hastily wrote the figures into his accounting book. 

She opened her mouth and began to haggle. 

"How do I know your crows are actually man-eating?" She asked with eyebrows quirked in disbelief. "One hundred yuan or nothing."

"Okay, I'll admit that's just for advertisement. They're intimidating enough without that. So for that, one-fifty. Take it or leave it. Final offer." 

"See! This whole thing is really shady. How do I know you won't just take my money and skip town tomorrow?" 

Wei Ying had put out no physical advertisements for his services. He lingered around the local watering holes, got to know the regulars and the bartenders, and asked them to send people his way if they got into 'some kind of a trouble'. So, it wasn't easy to find him. People usually went first to their family, then the police, and when all other options were exhausted, they went to him. 

He was a person of utter last resort, and by the looks of her clothing (understated but clearly of high quality materials and good taste), she was well-off. The money was of little consequence to her, and yet, she still wanted to haggle? 

He sighed. "Miss, I have my professional reputation at stake here. If I don't do my job well, everyone in town will know. You can ask the head waiter at the local tea house -- I scared off her usurious debt collectors and the musclemen they sent after her. Or the understudy for the theater -- I got her ex-husband to agree to a divorce with full custody and child support." 

She did listen after all. "Alright, you heard my story. Which package do you think I need?" 

Hers was a typical case: a boyfriend who turned abusive after a few months of charm and relentless wooing. The final straw was that he wanted her to cut-off all her male friends. 

"Usually, the regular's all it takes. But if he comes back, I'll scare him off until he leaves free-of-charge, I swear." 

The money was exchanged. He counted the bills and coins to make sure everything was in order. She looked like a honest gal, but you could never be sure of a mistake or something else. 

She slipped back on her burgundy cloak and its hood. "Thank you. The last few guys I hired… they were so confident but all they wanted was my money… When he kept coming back, they said I was on my own and threatened to throw me out…" 

Wei Ying listened to the rest of her tale and offered her a cup of tea before she set out to return home. She refused politely and left his home. 

Finally alone, Wei Ying took his money and went to deposit them inside his safe. 

A note slipped out: If you're ever in Lanling, ask around for a Zhao Yuyan. I'll show you around town.

If he were younger, during what seemed like another life, he would have said yes in a heartbeat and hopped onto his donkey.

But this was now, and a prophecy had been announced across all the lands that a young man of his description (and his powers) would bring about eternal darkness across all the lands. Even now, they were hunting for him. 

He had many hopes and dreams (and they were not buried, not entirely), but first he had to convince the people that he was no threat to them. 

He set out for the location that Yuyan had given him.

* * *

Yuyan's ex-boyfriend liked to harass her as she went about her day. He was loud, aggressive, and vulgar, and yet, most people would only glance at the situation and then pretend nothing was happening. She would maintain a stoic face as it happened, but her hands and shoulders would shake. When this happened, his voice would sweeten and he would plea that 'of course he had changed, couldn't she find it in her big beautiful heart to give him a second chance?' 

Wei Ying watched everything from a crow that he had imbued with his own qi. He could see what the crow saw, hear what the crow heard, and even control its movements to an extent. He came by this ability while trapped in the middle of a sandstorm and with would-be captors from every direction. Overhead, he had seen a desert hawk swoop above the swirls of sand and so he had focused all his energy on that hawk until he found himself watching the world from far above. 

It had been exhilarating and terrifying. 

Eventually, he had used the hawk to lead some of the men in the opposite direction and later still, he had found a way to break out of the hawk's mind. 

After dark, Yuyan's ex-boyfriend went home to a village some li out of Lanling. 

It was time. 

The ex-boyfriend lived in a home right next to a cemetery. He would probably try to sell the property as soon as possible or leave in a hurry for a relative's home once this was over. 

Wei Ying sat behind a particularly tall gravestone. What little light there was came from the crescent moon and two torches at the entrance of the cemetery. 

As the ex-boyfriend passed by the entrance, a shadow without a source grew on the ground until it left the ground entirely and became a mass of shadow with volume and heft. It was made of the darkest black, so pure that just looking at it, light became nothing but an idea. 

The ex-boyfriend took one look at the shadowy figure, shrieked, and immediately ran for his home, but it was too late. The shadow engulfed him completely. 

Within the shadow, Wei Ying summoned the spirits of Yuyan's ancestors. 

Inside the shadow, indistinct whispers beckoned to the ex-boyfriend. 

"… hurt her…" 

"…you know what you did…" 

"…revenge…our descendant…" 

The air grew icy cold and the ex-boyfriend's teeth clattered. He got down on his knees and bowed his head to the floor. 

"I'm s-sorry! I'll never do it again! Please, I'll do anything! Just let me live!" 

The spirits coalesced into a larger mass of darkness and swooped at him. 

They passed through him and he passed out. 

This was the result Wei Ying desired, so he thought that Yuyan would have no trouble afterwards. He rode back home.

* * *

All his preparations were in order. He left his modest farm in the capable hands of his neighbors from the plot next door. His side-job clients would have to fend for themselves, unfortunately. 

People said that Wei Ying was evil, that he had the power of darkness, that he would herald the end of the world. 

He didn't believe that. 

Truthfully, he didn't know the full extent of his powers. Just because it was a part of him didn't mean he knew everything. But he didn't want to test out his abilities near places where people lived.

A month ago, he heard talk that the esteemed Lan Wangji, fragment of the moon, bearer of light, blah blah (he had so many titles Wei Ying, with his swiss-cheese memory, forgot most of them) had set out for his quest to vanquish The Dark Lord (that was him?!? The Dark Lord? Lord of what? One acre of hard dirt, a shack, and a shady side-business?)

This Lan Wangji was worshipped like a god in the Water Nation and it was said that he was as fair and as lonesome and cold as the moon. 

That wasn't right, for a person to be raised like an object of worship. To be without friends and family. To not know warm, lazy summer afternoons. To be without warmth and good company and the bubbling haze of just-enough alcohol. Within his heart, Wei Ying pitied this Lan Wangji and thought that he, himself, was the lucky one.

Lan Wangji was just a person, because Wei Ying was also just a person. 

And if they were just two people, then they could become friends. 

If they could become friends, then Lan Wangji could advocate on his behalf and tell everyone that he wasn't evil. How could they go against what The Chosen One said? 

Then, together, they could work on a solution for the problem of The Cloud of Darkness. 

(Who named these things anyways?!?)

He jumped atop his donkey and set off in the direction of Lan Wangji.


	3. Dark Clouds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> LWJ encounters some trouble on his journey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo, i played myself & after outlining i think this is gonna be like ~20 chapters. i think i'll try to update on Sundays from now on but uh, no promises haha. (also probably going to edit everything because... the awkward diction is bugging me)

**LWJ**  
Lan Wangji tilted his head away from the noise of the squawking goosefish that flew awkwardly in and out of the glacial water. He gazed upon the flat expanse of glaciers and dark waters and tried to focus. 

It had been a three days since they set out from the Northern Water Temples. Many months ago, a messenger hawk arrived with a note saying that the Bearer of Darkness had been spotted near the Flaming Mountains inside the Fire Nation. 

They were now on a boat ferrying them from the Northern Water Tribe to the Earth Kingdom. The Water Tribes and Fire Nation had never been on good terms; some said it was intrinsic and due to their elemental natures, while others said that it had to do with their shared, tumultuous past. Whatever the case, no ferries ran between the two nations. Once they were in Earth Kingdom territory, they would cut through it in the shortest pass possible and take a ferry to the Fire Nation. 

Had his father taken this exact same route before? He never asked and his father never spoke to him. They were two parallel existences.

Qinheng-jun had been an exceptional youth. He mastered all the gentlemanly arts long before reaching the age-of-majority of twenty and defeated many fearsome beasts of legend. When the Cloud of Darkness first appeared and the first prophecy announced, it was expected that the problem would be solved within a year. 

His father came back home in three and broken in form and spirit, though this matter was always obfuscated through opaque language and sheer physical distance. 

His father also returned with a strange woman from an unknown background who everyone said had “laid him astray”. 

That strange woman was his mother. 

The cloud remained and in time came his elder brother. He did not bear the Light, so they tried for another. 

When he was born, it was said that he shone like the moon concealed by clouds. Many years later, his brother manifested the Light as well, but it was not quite like his. 

(He could not put his finger on it; the way that they were alike and yet not. His light was different, tempered with another quality.)

Then came the prophecy and so, his brother was pushed to his future duties as head-of-state and he to his as Bearer of Light. He had not spoken in protest when the roles were assigned to them, despite the fact that he knew that his brother’s lightbending was stronger than his own. The prophecy was the word of the gods and that was that. 

He gazed up in the direction of the sun and thought: “I will finish what my father could not.”

* * *

They landed at the northernmost port of the Earth Kingdom and swiftly made their way to Lanling. The retinue made good time and was only a day’s journey from Lanling when another message arrived during a short lunch break. 

“S-sir, it’s a mess-sage from Lanling,” a young retainer said. He bowed deeply before him (an unnecessary gestures even for one of his station and so a waste of energy) and handed him the message scroll. 

He opened it. The message said: The cloud has moved to the gardens of Lanling; thousands of lives are at stake; the Bearer of Light must arrive as swiftly as the wind. 

“Has my brother been notified?” 

The retained nodded. 

He dismissed the retainer and found his brother finishing up a preserved cod-frog. They greeted each other formally, but his brother broke into a smile. 

“Wangji, have some of this pickled cod-frog. Chef Zhou has really outdone himself this time.” 

He handed a cod-frog to him and Wangji took it after a moment of hesitation. The cod-frog was pungent with spices and other flavors (a hint of curry, tumeric, a sprinkle of lemon) and its flesh was peculiar with the main, middle section being fish-like and the legs and head like that of a frog. 

Wangji decided at once that he absolutely never wanted to taste it again, but his brother had suggested it to him, so he chewed on the rubbery cod-frog and swallowed. “Mn, it’s good.”

His brother chuckled at him and snatched the rest of it away. “Your face tells me otherwise. You don’t have to smooth over the truth for me.” He sipped on some water. “We’ll split off into two groups: one to go to Lanling and the other to join when they can. The group that’s to head over to Lanling should ride all the fastest, least worn-out horses.” 

Although ostensibly this was his quest, he still lacked in leadership ability and Xichen did most of the logistics and herding of people. People followed the Bearer of Light by reputation and not by deed. 

“Brother, why do you think the prophecy chose me and not you?” 

“I don’t know. The way of the Heavens are unknown to us mere humans. But I do know this: the ability to vanquish the Darkness won’t depend only on the strength of your bending or else –” 

Or else their father would have succeeded. 

“I see, thank you for your guidance.” 

He bowed and prepared for the journey ahead. Wangji was assigned two guards, though he did not know for what, because he was sure he was stronger than they at least. 

The two guards were unfamiliar to him (and must have been familiar with each other, for they did not make introductions before speaking) and prattled amongst themselves. 

“I’ve always wanted to visit those gardens. It’s a real shame. My cousin went last year and she wouldn’t shut up about it! Said it was the most beautiful place she’d ever been. She wanted to get married there, but of course, the Jins wouldn’t allow it. By the heavens, I don’t even know how she got in,” said the right guard. 

“So you just wanna show her up, is that it? You should show a little appreciation for culture, you uncultured swine.” The left guard huffed. “The gardens and forests of Lanling have been kept in tip-top pristine condition for centuries. Not a twig, not a flower out of line, and no fires neither.” 

Never a fire? 

Lan Wangji turned his head to the left. “Excuse me, Sir Zhang. Are you sure of this information, that the hunting grounds of Lanling have not had a fire since the land was first acquired? That would be, two hundred, no, maybe three hundred years.” 

Sir Zhang turned ghastly white. 

“Well?” 

“This humble one is not absolutely certain but has heard many accounts stating that the lands are untouched by natural disaster, disease, famine, and fire. There are some small exceptions, but that is generally the case.” 

“I see. Carry on.” 

The guards went back to conversing with each other, but the fire of conversation had been smothered. 

Wangji knew that, behind his back, people talked about him. They were generally scared of him or rather, his stature, abilities, and personality. He was raised in a way different from most, so, he was discomfited by the social norms of ordinary people. He would never live amongst them or have their small concerns and wants for a healthy baby, a happy marriage, or more money to fill their confers – so why did he need to understand them? 

He would lead them, guide them, and how does one lead, except from far above?

* * *

The Cloud descended upon them with supernatural speed. They were still many li from the Gardens of Lanling. 

The Cloud of Darkness could, at the most cursory of glances, be taken as just a thunderstorm. With another glance, one would see that the cloud moved unnaturally and unevenly as though it possessed intelligence. 

Because the Bearer of Darkness was not yet destroyed, he could only do so much to contain the Cloud. The normal four elements had no effect on the dark element, only light could stop it. In the confusion, he lost track of the other eight men and horses that were with them. His brother urged them to ride back, but they stood their ground. 

Tonight, the moon would be a waning crescent. The lesser the moon, the more diminished his powers would be, so he was thankful it was not a new moon. 

A malevolent energy crackled in the stale air. The grass beneath his horse were all wilted and dry, scraping against his legs. He heard no bird song, no call of an animal, or the buzz of an insect. The cloud sank lower to the ground and tendrils of black vapor moved towards their group. 

Breathing slowly, he focused on his seven chakras and imagined them being filled with light, one-by-one, by the luminescence of the moon. 

First, from his seven chakras, a familiar, but indescribable warmth filled him, then the warmth, the light, concentrated to his arms and effused as a ray of light. His brother did the same. 

There were an uncountable number of tendrils whipping down at them. It could have been anywhere from a hundred to a thousand, ranging in size. He and his brother extinguished the nearest ones, but they just kept coming. The benders around them attempted a number of tricks while they wrestled with their panicking horses. They tried to freeze the vapor. They tried to diminish the darkness by lighting large, bright fires. They tried to redirect the cloud using airbending. None of it worked. 

He felt his limbs grow weaker and weaker, his feet feeling like they had sacks of rice tied to them. The bolts of light he shot out grew dimmer and smaller. The Cloud seemed diminished slightly in size, but it could cover half of an entire forest, so who could say? 

A crow cawed somewhere in the distance and the Cloud… dispersed. Like some force that had been holding it together had been undone. The Cloud’s movements became much more sluggish. Clumps of miasma hung to the tops of the cedar and gingko trees and the air still felt constricted and heavy, but the clumps did not reform. 

To his left, a young man dressed all in black except for a red ribbon breezed past him. Their eyes met for a moment and then the man turned away. 

Who was that man? And why did he help them?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> soooo, you know how WWX is a 🤡🤡🤡 because he said stuff like "who would ever want to live in the cloud recesses, everything suuucks here" & then he ended up marrying LWJ? well, it's going to be like that except it's LWJ that's the 🤡🤡🤡 this time
> 
> oh, and lemme know if anything was confusing to read & thanks for reading ❤❤❤


	4. An Awkward Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wei Ying spies on the Jins and meets Lan Wangji (properly) for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Possible TW:** discussion of coercive sex (because of Jin Guangshan)

**Wei Ying**  
Although he only caught a glimpse of him, Wei Ying could say with certainty that Lan Wangji was the most handsome man he had ever seen. The songs and words of praise were no exaggerations. People always said that he had a face carved out of jade, but Wei Ying felt that to truly capture his sheer splendor, a person would need new words. Failing that, perhaps a stirring poem or a magnificent drawing. Oh, but he would try with his words. 

The Bearer of Light had snow white hair, fair skin, and a well-proportioned face. But no, he wasn’t doing it justice. Lan Wangji always had an intense and serious expression, something that would likely scare off admirers from approaching him, but Wei Ying thought that there was a charm in that. 

So he wondered: what could that face look like with a smile? Nobody ever sang about his smile, and for some reason, perhaps by his impish nature, Wei Ying felt the desire to cause a smile upon that fair but frosty face. 

It had been a rash decision to help the Bearer of Light when he was nearly overtaken by the Cloud of Darkness. The original plan was to “accidentally” come upon his group while they were night hunting, help them take down a few beasts, and eventually gain his trust. Emphasis on eventually.

Well! No matter. Lan Wangji would certainly feel a sense of gratitude for his courageous actions, so it was worth it. 

Wei Ying mused more about Lan Wangji as he watched through his crow as it spied upon the Jin maids washing basins filled with gold-lined robes. The crow preened its own feathers contently on a plum tree next to the maid’s quarters which was tastefully built with construction good enough for a wealthy family. The air filled with the scent of soap. Due to the Jin’s great wealth, even the servant’s quarters were lined with bushels of the sect’s Sparks-among-Snow. 

The maids chattered and hummed about this-and-that that had happened during their day. Wei Ying listened, but nothing interesting had been said. Guangshan was a lecherous old geezer, but his coin was good and so people kept on working for him and tried to keep thing hush-hush. He was screwing (or perhaps, more like coercing) half of the maids working for him, and they’d occasionally laugh at how painfully average his dick (“He bragged that it was as thick and long as an arm! The delusion of that man.”) and terrible his technique in bed was (“He just lies there in bed like a corpse; I do all the work! I’d prefer a wooden phallus next time.”) But a few would talk about how uncomfortable, how sick it made them feel and the brushing and washing would pause for a breathless moment, but then they’d change the subject. (They needed the money.)

“That poor little Lady Mo. Somehow, she thinks he’s in love with her. A little thick in the head, wouldn’t you say?” 

Another maid whacked her. “How dare you! When Jin Guangshan came onto her, she was barely sixteen. She was just a child, that sick old man.” 

“You’re just saying that because Lady Mo looks a little like your daughter.” 

“You’re damn right, and I’d never let my daughter set foot within a hundred li of this wretched place!” 

“Hey, how old is old man Jin anyways? He was screwing around when my mother was a maid here.” 

“Huh, that’s right. I’m… getting on in my age and he doesn’t look like he’s aged a day.” 

Wei Ying heard of many old sages who lived to an unfathomable old age, be he assumed that to require much wisdom and natural talent. He didn’t suppose that Jin Guangshan had much of either. 

(He hoped that the peacock took after his mother. Last he heard, Yanli and his engagement was still up for discussion.)

A few incense burns later, they flitted about to the topic of the Wens. 

“Do you think the Jins are going to side with the Wens?” 

“Well, it’d be most advantageous. The Fire Nation’s making all these advances in machinery and they need coal and other raw resources which the Jins have in heap loads. And everyone knows that the Earth King’s just a child puppet head, so he’s not going to do anything.” 

“If there’s a war, they’ll start conscripting from the local population.” 

“They can do that?” 

“Of course, Yun-yun, they’re rich and powerful. What can’t they do? They’ll make up some proclamation saying that ‘it’s to spread technology and wealth across the world’. Maybe they’ll pin the misdeeds of the Bearer of Darkness onto the opposing side. Whatever it takes to convince the stupid and gullible.” 

“Maybe I’ll move.”

“You won’t get your pension that way.”

“Fuck!” And then she started laughing, but it was bitter, hollow laugh that shook Wei Ying to the core and reminded him that he had places to be. 

He urged the crow to unfurl his wings and fly. Wei Ying needed to get this information about the Jins to Lan Wangji and his brother.

* * *

Unfortunately, when he arrived, the Lans and their retinue were deep in discussion with members of the Jin family. The guards were all positioned around the two Lan brothers. They drank tea with an unknown man inside a small pavilion that was part of a larger garden. Wei Ying had only ever seen the Peacock and his cousin, so he didn’t recognize any of the faces here. They were probably engaging in petty inter-family politicking and trying to curry favor with the Lans. 

A man, somewhat on the short side, nodded to Zewu-jun, took his leave, and the rest of the Jins followed. 

Wei Ying hadn’t thought this out. What was he going to do? Just saunter on in and say, “Hello! I saved your life! Clearly, I’m not a bad guy and surely will not stab you in the back at the earliest opportunity. Please be my friend. Also, wow, you’re unfairly handsome.” 

Really, he shouldn’t have started wearing all black all the time. It gave a bad impression, like he was a scary Dark Lord who lived in a murder cave with his posse of dark femme fatales and drank the blood of twenty virgins or something. 

(He would think that if did drink the blood of virgins, he wouldn’t have massive under-eye bags and ever-sallower skin by the day.)

Anyways, he wore all black because they were easier and cheaper to clean. That was definitely why. Definitely not because he wore the all-black ensemble one day, looked in a mirror, and thought he looked like a magnificent rogue. Definitely not. 

“You can come out now,” Lan Wangji said. 

Wei Ying stepped out of his hiding spot from behind a sloping roof and dropped down to the ground next to a koi pond. He softened his descent with a gust of airbending. 

The others surrounded him in a circle, shouted for more guards, and unsheathed their swords at him. Purely for ceremonial and intimidation-related reasons he supposed. Everyone with a brain knew that bending was more dangerous. 

“So, what gave it away?” He asked as he patted dirt and dust off his robes. 

“Your crow is here.” 

“There are many crows in all the world,” he said as he put his hands up to show that he was unarmed. 

“Your crow has a broken beak and is unusually large for a maimed animal.” 

“Hm, I see. I have a terrible memory, so I didn’t think of that.” He paused. “I come in peace, but you can tie my hands if you’d like.” 

“You’re suspicious,” said one of the retainers. 

“Flippant, discourteous, unruly.” 

Just then, more guards arrived with the somewhat important-looking young man. 

“Meng Yao, we have it under control,” said Lan Xichen. “We’ll leave your father’s estate if we’re troubling you.” 

“No, that’s not necessary. I want to hear what this intruder has to say.” 

With this Meng Yao here, Wei Ying felt that it’d be harder to get the Lans on his side. He seemed to be on good terms with Lan Xichen, so why would they take his word over Meng Yao’s? His face grew hotter and beads of sweat built up. 

The guards moved to tie his hands but Lan Wangji motioned for them to stop. “I want to know who you are and why you helped save us the other day.” 

“Well, you see, when a woman and a man love each other very much they –” Jiang Cheng always said that he had a bit of a foot-in-problem and he was right. 

“The important parts, if you will,” Lan Xichen said. 

He paused for a moment to recollect his thoughts, wracked his mind for ideas, and began again. “I know this sounds extra suspicious, but I can’t give out my name. I’ve disgraced my family, and I can’t have you tying my actions to them. I was wandering the countryside when I saw your group beset by the Cloud of Darkness and I knew I had to do something.” He picked at his nose sheepishly as he thought of a way to continue. “So, this sounds far-fetched too, but my mother was a disciple of Baoshan Sanren and she passed down a few bending tricks that normal people don’t know. I used one of them on the Cloud and, yeah, that’s the whole story.” 

“Though I cannot discount your actions yesterday, I must also question why your story is so… vague. As though you’re hiding something,” Jin Guangyao said. 

“Sir Jin, I was – am still deeply ashamed of my past actions, so forgive me if I’d rather not speak of them. But if you must know, when I was younger, I experimented with bloodbending on animals, mostly crows.” A lie, of course, but one that Wei Ying thought was plausible enough. 

“And are you still bloodbending the pet crow you carry around you?” 

“Well, yes and no. Because of my past experiments, it’s been permanently bonded to me, so I can see what it sees. And because of that bond, her flock has kicked her out, so she has nowhere else to be. I see this as a form of penance.” He spoke calmly with a low, solemn voice. 

“Alright, if you were able to dispel the Cloud so easily which the whole world has been having trouble with, why don’t you teach us your techniques here?” 

Damn. He should’ve rehearsed his answers more. 

“Respectfully, Sir, I was only able to conjure up the movements during a life-or-death situation. If I tried to teach it to you now, I might make mistakes and teach you something that makes matters worse and we wouldn’t want that now, would we?” 

“Surely if you were exiled, then you would have been branded. May I –” 

“Enough,” Lan Wangji said. “This man saved our lives yesterday.” 

“Second Young Master Lan, I find this man to be highly untrustworthy. I beseech you to allow me and my men to verify his claims before you set out,” Meng Yao said, bowing low. 

“Meng Yao, I trust my brother’s judgment and there is no need to be so formal. We are already well-acquainted,” Lan Xichen said. 

Meng Yao smiled placidly at Lan Xichen, but it was the kind of smile that reminded Wei Ying of large sea creatures lurking beneath still waters. “Very well, I’ll call my men off.” 

He called out to them in their yellow uniforms and they marched off to some other part of the palace. 

Wei Ying sidled up to Lan Wangji and slung his right arm around him. Maybe that was too friendly, but that was his nature. 

The Bearer of Light stared blankly at him and brushed off his arm. “Why are you here now? Why did you run off?” 

“Lan Wangji, good question! Right after I made the Cloud dispel, I got flustered and ran off. I thought… maybe you’d send me to jail? Please don’t send me to jail. But anyways, after a while, I realized that maybe I could join up with your group and help. Oh, and I know all the best restaurants and taverns and tourist attractions in all the major towns of the Earth Kingdom! And I’m an excellent drinking buddy!” 

The entourage muttered to each other as they sized him up. Although the Lans themselves were barred from alcohol, the rules technically only applied while in the Northern Water Temple. Many of the retainers were also from liege families that weren’t beholden to the same rules as the Lans. 

One by one, the men nodded and approached him for information about wine, beautiful women, etc etc. Wei Ying told a bad joke, but they chuckled anyways. (See Jiang Cheng, it’s all in the delivery. You have to commit!) 

He looked back and saw Lan Wangji walking away from them with his infuriatingly proper posture. 

“Here, have some Emperor’s Smile,” Wei Ying said as pulled a jar of Emperor’s Smile from his qiankun bag, elbowed Lan Wangji lightly, and tossed the jar in his face. 

Lan Wangji caught it. He frowned slightly and passed it back to him. “It is not proper to go drinking in the daytime. We Lans do not partake of alcohol.” 

“Oh, Lan Wangji, you fuddy-duddy, how do you know that you won’t like it if you haven’t ever tried it?” Wei Ying asked with his mouth quirking up. He passed the alcohol back. 

“Perhaps I have misjudged you. I have no wish to dawdle with you. Leave me be.” And so, Lan Wangji passed the jar back to Wei Ying and turned away from him to join his brother. He didn’t look back and Wei Ying’s heart sank. He hadn’t even known that it would do that but sank it did. 

The others who saw him tried to console him, saying how that was just how Lan Wangji was. Cold. Sterile. Unmoved. They, with him in charge, planned out a truly spectacular pub crawl for later that night. (Read: It would definitely end with many of the retainers puking their guts out.)

Out of the corner of his eyes, Wei Ying felt eyes watching him from dusty dark alleyways and bustling tea houses. The Jins, or one of their lackey families, were onto him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welll... technically, it's still Sunday in my timezone. i hope you guys like this chapter??? i tried to channel my extremely awkward pining preteen self into WY but idk if it fits haha. 
> 
> thanks for reading! :) :) :)


	5. A Day in Mo Village

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They spend a day in Mo Village, a child finds his mother, and a discussion on the nature of justice is had.

**LWJ**  


The Lans, being one of the Great Clans, had a long and storied list of traditions and customs. Compared to the other clans, they were the most austere and traditional in their ways. The most visible rule was that all the Lans had to wear headbands as a symbol of restraint and propriety. 

For as long as he could remember, Lan Wangji always wore a cloud-embroidered white headband wrapped neatly around his head. The other members of his clan took their headbands off to take baths or to rest at night, but Wangji never took his off. His uncle had forbidden him to do so. 

"Wangji, when you were resurrected by the Moon Spirit, your chi was altered forever and made unstable. Your headband is special and will help you regulate the imbalance in your chi. You must always wear it." 

He nodded dutifully and promised with all his heart that he would follow his uncle's guidance. 

Later, when he was but ten years old, he had been present at an inter-clan conference. The son of some minor leader asked absentmindedly why he went bathing with his headband on. He was just about to explain his condition when his brother flashed him a look that told him to stop. 

His brother answered that boy's question with a hazy answer: full of words but little meaning. The boy quickly lost interest and no one paid any more attention. 

Was that not lying? "Be trustworthy", the rules said. 

Later that night, his brother spoke with him privately. 

"Brother, why did you not answer that boy's question? Were you not lying?" 

"If I told him and everyone else about your condition, they might begin to form ill-intended stories about you. And I did not lie but merely diverted the conversation." 

"How is that any different?" 

"Wangji, if someone were to ask you if their poetry was worthy of praise, but you found it… lacking in eloquence, skill, and general conceit, what would you say?" It had been too late to drink cups of tea, so they drank cups of hot water instead. 

"I would tell them exactly which lines and characters are lacking. I would tell them that, overall, their poetry is lacking in eloquence, skill, and idea. It would be my hope that they may improve on them in the future," he said, the words first coming out hesitantly, then less so. 

"But if you tell someone that, you might crush their motivation to write poetry in the future." His brother spoke as thought from experience. 

"How is that any of my concern? The would-be poet is to write poetry and the would-be reader is to read and appraise the poetry honestly," he said brusquely. The higher good was to create better poetry, was it not? 

"What I am saying is that the rules are not so clear-cut. You need to assess the situation and decide what is most important in each circumstance. Perhaps if the person aspired to be a poet and had thick skin, you could speak the way you described. But if the person were a mere dilettante, you should use gentler words and focus on praise. Do you understand?" 

"Yes, brother." 

Wangji had not understood Xichen's words then, and even now, he could not say that he did. Nevertheless, he knew that after the arrival of the stranger with the blinding, eager smiles, change was on the horizon.

* * *

He absolutely did not like this new “change”

The man without a name said that they could start calling him “Wu Ming” since pointing at a man and saying “Hey you!” was somewhat rude. 

"Lan Wangji! Look at this poster! Isn't it terribly hideous?" Wu Ming said as he waved a poster of the Dark Lord in Wangji’s face. He wriggled his eyebrows suggestively. The poster was of a middle-aged ferocious bearded man with wild eyebrows, a broken warty nose, and a thick jaw. 

They had traveled farther south and were now passing through Mo Village. The Dark Lord was said to still be in the Fire Nation though now near the Black Cliffs. 

Mo Village was a lively one that specialized in making earthenware crafts and flower bouquets, but from appearances, it was the same as any other village. The road was lined with stalls selling everything that a villager might need. Beasts of burden trudged through the dirt streets with carts and wares behind them. People heckled and chattered in twos, threes, and larger groups and they wore clothing of all the colors of the rainbow. The smoky smell of char siu wafted through the air, mixed in with the smell of earthy fire, floral scents, and wine. 

In other words, Wangji wanted to pass through the place as quickly as possible. Yet, here was Wu Ming asking for his attention practically every hour they were awake. Even more absurdly, they had to douse the man with a bucket of cold water and bang pots over his head to rouse him from his sleep this morning. At nine in the morning! Nine! Also strangely, Wu Ming had a flock of crows follow him everywhere. 

What had they gotten into? 

And worse than that, almost all of his retinue had been given leave today to explore Mo Village, because today was a local holiday. Something about a lantern festival and wishes and hopes for the future. Now, it was just his brother, himself, Wu Ming, and a few of the most loyal retainers. 

Didn’t they worry about what damage the Dark Lord could do in the intervening time? 

His brother had privately pushed him into Wu Ming’s direction, saying something about “Wangji needing more familiarity with peers his own age”. Currently, said brother was engaged in a conversation with one of their liege members. 

“Yes, the poster is of a… not the most handsome man. What of it?” Wangji said with his hand holding onto his white stallion’s reins, taking care to not steer him into any of the nearby stalls or people. 

“I’ve always heard that the Dark Lord is a handsome young man. Maybe even one of the most handsome in all of the Earth Kingdom.” 

“It matters not what he looks like. He needs to die.” Death was not a desired outcome to any encounter, but it needed to be done. 

They passed a crowd of running, rowdy children that were chasing after a raggedy ball. One of them looked Wangji in the eye accidentally and withered under his look. 

He had not even said anything. Children. 

“How can you be so sure he must die?” Wu Ming said, swiping a stick of half-eaten char siu that had been left unattended from the ground. 

He caught Wu Ming by the wrist and looked him straight in his smiling gray eyes. “I have caught you stealing red-handed.” 

Wu Ming smirked and never parting his eyes from Wangji, tore off a large strip of meat and chewed on it ravenously. He reached through his qiankun pouch, produced a shocking amount of chili flakes, and proceeded to dump all of it on the meat. “It looks to me as though the food’s been abandoned.” He paused, wiping his greased mouth with his sleeve. Disgusting. “When I was young, I lived with my parents who traveled from place to place. We didn’t have a lot to eat, so believe me when I say I know what abandoned food looks like. They’re not coming back for it.” 

“That meat skewer is unsanitary and liable to cause the spread of disease.” Who knew what mannerisms of vagrant or vermin had licked or nibbled on that thing? 

“Tell you what, Lan Wangji, if I get sick, you can personally tell me, ‘I told you so’ and punish me as you see fit.” He let the mostly empty stick dangle in his mouth like it were a blade of grass. “But back to what we were saying before – how can you be so sure that he must die? What if he can be reasoned with? What exactly has he done?” 

Wu Ming was a loose-lipped, chatty fellow whose mouth worked at the speed of the wind. His mind was always full of odd ideas, but he was impressively well-learned. So, perhaps the idea could be debated at least. 

“The Dark Lord must perish, because that is the only way to extinguish the Cloud of Darkness permanently.” The prophet had said so, therefore, it must be true. “The Dark Lord is currently wrecking havoc in the Fire Nation and has not been moved by their pleas for mercy.” He was an evil man who could not be saved. 

“So, you’ve never met him.” 

“Mn.” 

“And this is all hearsay.” 

“From reliable sources.” 

“If you say so, Bearer of Light.” 

A crowd had gathered around a small crying child, maybe between six or ten years of age. He was not good with guessing children’s ages. The women tried calming the small child and asking him where his mother was, but he was so panicked that the words would not come out. 

Wu Ming noticed immediately and handed the reins of his donkey to Wangji. He whistled to hurry his crows away as well and talked the rest of the crowd into going back to their business, saying something about how their presence was not reassuring the child. 

He got down to the level of the child and started talking calmly and gently to him. (“Do you want to lie down?” “No.” The boy proceeded to sit right onto the dirty ground. “Okay.”) He tried to calm the child by getting him to envision himself counting an absurd number of lambs hopping over a picket fence. Eventually, the child stopped hiccuping and sobbing and started telling them who he was looking for: his mother who was very, very pretty who was definitely older than him but not old-old like a granny and maybe a head shorter than this nice older brother also he was really, really hungry. 

So, they were looking for a beautiful woman with a missing child. Wangji, naturally, let Wu Ming do most of the talking. 

“That child is old enough to find his mother on his own. If you let him be, he would sooner learn to be self-reliant.” Every child would have to leave their mother eventually. He had to at an abnormally young age. 

“He’s not an adult yet.” The little boy gestured for Wu Ming to kneel down and whispered something to him. Apparently, he wanted a piggyback ride, because Wu Ming hoisted him right up and the child giggled brightly. 

“You are spoiling him.” When he was a child, there was not even the idea of piggyback rides and he grew up to be a pride of the Water Tribe. He had grown up well; everyone said so. 

Wu Ming shifted the child around until he felt that they were comfortably secured on his back. “I think what we have is a difference of opinion. But, Lan Wangji, even adults need the support and help of other people.” 

Ridiculous. Besides his brother, there was no one who could lend true aid on his quest to end the Bearer of Darkness. Who could he rely on? Was he to ask the small lost child for help with getting lost and helpless? 

No one seemed to know where the woman was, but a few painted women hidden behind colorful fans had told Wu Ming where to find them if he wanted to “have a good time”. What did that mean? Why could they not do that in public? A woman of child-bearing age had also smiled warmly at him and produced a meat bun for each of them, saying that they were such nice young lads. Generally speaking, Wu Ming was charming and good-looking and people tended to converse with him with rapt, warm attention. 

Why did they like him so much? 

“Xiao Yu! Your mother’s looking for you!” An anxious woman cried out. 

The child jumped down from Wu Ming’s back and ran and collided into her. The mother composed herself and welcomed him into her awaiting arms with a beaming smile. 

(Something buried long ago ached inside him.)

“Mo Xuanyu, never run off like that ever again!” The mother said angrily. She pulled on his ear and told him off some more. 

Mo Xuanyu started sobbing again, his mother apologized for her outburst, and she hugged him again while smothering him with loud, wet kisses. It was sweet? but somewhat embarrassing and awkward to watch as a stranger. 

“Oh! Where are my manners. I’m Mo Huilan, the second lady of the Mo estate. I must thank you for helping my son today, so won’t you stay for dinner? And if you’d like, we can even find some rooms for you travelers to board tonight,” she said animatedly with many gestures while bobbing her poor son up and down. 

Somewhere in the confusion of the lost child, they had lost sight of the rest of their group. His brother had accounted for this, and said that they would all meet up tomorrow at noon at Mo Village’s north gate. His brother had encouraged him to make a new friend – not verbally, but it was implied. 

“We would be delighted,” Wu Ming answered for them. 

Wangji glanced at him and sighed. It would be rude to not follow Lady Mo now, so follow they did.

* * *

“Hi everyone! This is Nice Brother.” Mo Xuanyu pointed to Wu Ming in front of the entire Mo family and servants. “And this is Scary Brother.” He pointed at Wangji. “They’re going to have dinner with us!” 

Wangji must have grimaced at the moniker, because Xuanyu looked taken back by surprise. His mother coughed and tried to fix the situation by talking to her son. 

“Okay, he and Nice Brother helped me today, so he can be Frowning Brother.” 

This child was definitely spoiled, because no one scolded him for his remarks but merely chuckled politely and shooed him away to his mother. His relatives apologized on his behalf, but Wu Ming found it hilarious and was close to tears from laughter. 

He also found the black-cloth hat with flaps that Wangji was currently wearing hilarious as well. Earlier, Wangji had mentioned that he wanted to be discreet, so he needed some way of concealing his Lan ribbon. He could not take it off, so Wu Ming produced a ridiculous court hat for him to wear. 

They were currently seated at a rosewood table eating off of communal dishes. The food was pleasant enough, though more preserved and pickled than he would have liked. 

“...don’t talk about the hat. My friend’s rather shy about his receding hairline. Poor fellow, so handsome and young and to be cursed with the hair of his balding uncle. It’s just such a waste,” Wu Ming said just loudly enough that Wangji could hear. Wangji creased his eyebrows as he glared for a moment at him. 

His uncle was certainly not balding. In fact, there had never been case of a balding man in the entire line of Lans. They were all peerless beauties. To say otherwise was to impinge on his family’s reputation. 

He would have corrected Wu Ming if not for the fact that clearly, they all liked him and would not hear him out. 

Wu Ming dropped with his chopsticks a lump of dark seared meat onto his bowl of rice. 

“Frowning Brother. Or Scary Brother. Whatever you prefer,” Wu Ming said, trying hard to hold in his laughter. “Here, some bullpig liver. I hear it’s full of nutrition. Maybe it’ll help you hold onto your luscious inky dark locks!” He even winked at him. 

Wu Ming continued like so for the rest of the unbearable dinner, needling him whenever the opportunity arose. People were not supposed to converse, especially so loudly, during dinner, but this was not the Northern Water Temple, so he had to hold his tongue. Occasionally, someone would try to make idle conversation with Wangji, but they always lost interest or nerve by the fifth or so sentence. 

The Mo Manor was well-off but not extravagantly so. They did not have singers and dancers perform during dinner nor did they prepare so many courses that Wangji lost count. Eventually, dinner ended with platters of fruit and sweets. 

Wangji took care to eat only what was enough to sate raw hunger in his belly, but Wu Ming ate like he was a king at a banquet. 

He was so ill-mannered that Wangji found it hard to believe that such a person could also quote obscure passages of poetry. 

Mo Xuanyu tottered over sleepily to Wu Ming and waved his still chubby hands in his face. “Nice Brother! Do you wanna join me for our Lantern Festival? Oh! And I guess Frowning Brother can come if he wants.” 

He did not sound like he thought Wangji would want to go. 

Of course, Wu Ming agreed at once and pulled Wangji literally into the whole affair. 

The Lantern Festival was a very common sort of event in all of the world. It was just that all the different places had different dates and slightly different touches on it. Principally, festival-goers would make light lanterns and watch as they drifted up until they were but pinpricks in the sky. At the Northern Water Tribe, they were instructed to weave their own lanterns out of seaweed and kelp by-products (trees were scarce) as a character building exercise. The lanterns were notoriously difficult to build and it was not uncommon to see small children weep as their lanterns plummeted back down to earth due to bad construction. They were not allowed to write wishes upon the lanterns, because the spirits and gods were presumed to know better than they did what to wish for. 

In the Earth Kingdom, or just Mo Village, things were different. Most of the lanterns were of the same make and they all had different wishes and sometimes, even drawings, written upon them. 

They stepped out beyond the threshold of the Mo estate and Wangji felt the warmth of Wu Ming’s hand inside his own. He shivered and raised his head to gaze upon the sky. 

It was a chilly, nearly moonless night. The sky was pitch black but illuminated by the glow of a thousand ember lights twinned by their rippling reflection upon a nearby lake. On its shores, people launched small paper boats lit by candles.

They moved to a more secluded spot and were handed two lanterns, a brush, and some ink. Mo Xuanyu’s mother helped him set up his lantern. 

Wu Ming licked his brush, dipped it into the inkwell, squinted in the half-lit light, and began to write. Unsanitary as always. 

“So, what are you going to wish for?” Wu Ming asked. 

“What about you?” Wangji asked, diverting the question. He had never thought up a wish for himself before. 

“Me?” He laughed boisterously from his belly. “I’m going to ask Nuwa to protect your hair.” 

“You are asking Nuwa. The mother-goddess of humanity. For assistance with my hair,” Wangji repeated as he brushed his fingertips over where his hair should have been as it was now covered by this ridiculous hat. “I am not even balding --” 

“Alright, alright! That’s not what I wrote, I was just teasing you. I wrote that ‘I wish to stand with justice and to live with no regrets’. It’s a little cheesy, I admit –” 

Uncontrollably, Wangji felt his heart warmed by the thought. It was noble; it was right. 

Wu Ming’s face grew his trademark, bunny-teeth smile and he pointed vigorously at him. “You smiled! Frowning Brother has become Smiling Brother!” 

He looked away. “I did not. You must have imagined it or it was the lighting. But nevertheless, I agree with your general sentiment and will write the same.” So he got his own lantern and supplies into position. 

“Say, Wangji, what does ‘justice’ mean to you anyways?” 

“To be just and follow the righteous path of one’s ancestors. To be fair and even-handed when doling out punishments. To be blind and impartial when dealing with grievances,” he said. 

“That’s what you were taught to memorize, isn’t it? But what I want to know is what justice means to you. Personally.” 

That was true; it really was the exact lines he had memorized. 

“I am not even of twenty years of age, what could I possibly know of ‘justice’?” Surely, his ancestors’ hundreds of years of wisdom would be better than anything he could conjure up? 

“But there are people our age who are married and have children already. Would you say that they know nothing?” 

Wangji put down his brush and thought hard and long. Why did it matter what he thought of justice? Was justice not some immutable ideal that existed, independent of the whims and follies of mankind? He was but an instrument through which the will of higher beings up in Heaven conducted their unknown workings. 

“Perhaps you shouldn’t put down what I wrote if you can’t give me an answer.” 

Why had he wanted to write the same words as Wu Ming? Was it the swagger and self-confidence that he possessed? Did he just want to copy whoever happened to be here because he had no answer of his own.

How could he be a Bearer of Light if he did not know what it was for – not personally, at least. 

“Mn, then instead I will write, ‘I wish to understand what justice is as it pertains to my own self.’” 

“I hope that you’ll find your answer,” Wu Ming said, smiling softly at him. Their lanterns were ready to be launched. “Okay, let’s let go at the same time: three, two, one, go!” 

They released the lanterns and watched them drift up into the dark expanse above. 

“I hope so too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Basically, this is me copying the lantern lighting scene from The Untamed, because I really liked it. & LWJ gets slightly defrosted. Slightly. 
> 
> Oh, and the first of many small cameos from various MDZS characters! MXY is kind of a bratty child here :) Hopefully the humor isn't too awk here. I don't know how to write flirting human beings for my life, so I'm second-hand cringing toooooo (LWJ should... probably be noticing how WY looks more??? uh... let's just say he's so repressed he can't even think about it too much???)
> 
> And I guess I generally vibe w/ WY as a "sexy sewer rat" kind of dude, so here he is, eating strange food off of the ground. Somehow looking hot as hell despite not showering enough & eating poorly. :P 
> 
> Thanks for reading!!!


	6. Come closer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wei Ying and Lan Wangji become closer. Meng Yao and Wei Ying play 4-D chess. Someone loses.

**WY**

Lan Wangji, whether due to a miraculous stroke of luck or due to Wei Ying's own efforts, seemed marginally less annoyed with him now. 

This was not to say that they were friends -- they weren't friends yet (still wouldn't drink wine with him! the old fuddy duddy) but the wall around Wangji crumbled just a little. They could discuss frivolous things now, though Wangji always said he wasn’t interested. But he always listened and sometimes asked questions. 

Like, for instance, the idea of pranks. Wei Ying had placed a special air cushion that… mimicked the sound of flatulence on Lan Wangji's seat at dinner. 

(A-Ying was three years old; he had said so himself!)

A few around them had nervously chuckled as Lan Wangji's ears grew redder and redder. "What is this? Who did this?" 

"I did," Wei Ying said. He really needed to fix this foot in mouth problem. 

"Wu. Ming. Do not disturb the peace of others," he said, every word growing more irate.

"Wait! I can explain. It's a prank." 

"What… is a prank?" 

Wow, he needed to go outside more. Meet some people. Loosen up. Maybe not too much; that was part of the charm. But still – what was a prank??? 

And so, Wei Ying launched into a passionate defense of pranks and general merriment making. How much was too much (don’t pretend to be dead, it wasn’t funny), where were the best places to shop (local toy makers were usually all too happy to make custom orders), what made most people happy (a glimmer of a past happy memory). 

"… to make people laugh. Laughter is like, that, uh, little something something that makes everything – the harshness of everyday life – go down smoother. Even if it's just for a moment. Surely, you could bend the rules a little?" 

Lan Wangji didn't seem convinced at the time. But, that night, as though the stars had aligned in some strange ineffable way, he began to tell a tale of how one frosty morning, his brother and he made snowmen in the temple’s gardens. One for him, one for his brother, one for his uncle, another two for his parents. His uncle had passed them by but said no disparaging remarks on their behavior. 

Some days later, he started using the lamest of dad jokes and puns. 

And then, after Wei Ying had pulled him running through the streets during some obscure food-based festival, Wangji smiled at him once! True, it was the tiniest of smiles, just a tiny upward curl of his rosy lips, but it was a smile! 

(It was cute! And beautiful and warmed his heart to its core. Like a rainbow after a sun shower, all the more beautiful for its rarity.)

Wei Ying, bubbling inside like a bottle of alcohol shaken violently, then stupidly pointed it out for all to see. 

Which earned him a "hmph!" and Wangji turning away from him briskly with the energy of a slap to the face. 

Oomph. 

Roughly every two weeks, Wei Ying would receive a note from Yunmeng by way of a mourning pigeon that was keyed to his person, or rather, the Yunmeng clarity bell he still wore underneath his robes. The note would be divided into three strips and delivered by three different courier birds. The message could only be deciphered with all three pieces usually. 

Today, the final piece of the bi-weekly message would be delivered. Wei Ying had awoken at a unusually early hour all bleary-eyed and leaden-limbed and dragged himself outside. The courier birds were trained to blend in with their surroundings, only a faint ringing from the bell would signal their arrival. 

The bell rang and Wei Ying scanned the nearby trees for birds. He found the mourning pigeon wobbling on the branch of a fir tree and moved to untie its note. The bird careened some more precariously and fell off its branch. Luckily, he held out his hands and caught the poor thing in his hands. 

The bird had noticeable bleeding within its plumage (a fight with another bird perhaps) and was missing some feathers (was that… by a human hand?). It needed to be rehabilitated.

* * *

"Lan Wangji, will you please find me a bird doctor?" 

"Where did you find this bird?" 

He wanted to lie, but after yesterday's events, thought again. Trust was hard to regain once lost. "It delivered a letter from home to me, well, ok, part of a letter, and I found that it had been injured. It's just a wee little birdie, won't you take pity upon it?" Wei Ying exaggeratedly fussed over the bird, even swaddled it like a babe, and rocked the bundle to-and-fro. 

"Mn. We shall find the finest bird doctor in town. We will not want to wing it." 

Lan Wangji would make a fantastic bird father. Or a father in general. Any maiden in the land would be lucky to have him. 

It turned out, after some questioning, that there was no bird doctor in Mo Village, just a general veterinarian that also worked as the town doctor. 

They, or rather Wangji, handed over the money and let the doctor do his thing. He poked and prodded, asked a few questions, and applied ointments to the wounds. 

"The wounds are all external, so they'll heal quickly. However, the feathers that were plucked out were flight feathers, so in order to regain full flight functionality, this bird will have to grow them back." 

They paid the doctor his fee and make their way back to the rest of the group. 

Lan Wangji was warming up to him. 

He needed more time, of course, to fully gain his trust. Around every corner, he felt the gaze of someone watching him. 

He couldn't prove it, but he always had a niggling thought that his pursuers had something to do with the Jins. 

When he had been say, oh, maybe six or so, he traveled about the Earth Kingdom with his parents. It was wonderful fun: to be so light and carefree and go wherever the wind took you. His father had been the Jiang clan's right hand man, so they traveled back once or twice a year to visit. 

Eventually, one year when he was grown enough, his parents decided to move back to Yunmeng. 

It wasn't all sunshine-and-rainbows. Uncle Jiang was a renowned waterbender, but Jiang Cheng was terrible at waterbending and much preferred firebending and earthbending due to his personality. 

Thus began the endless tirades. The comparisons. Smashed up plates and bowls. 

His parents tried his best to mediate, but eventually, Jiang Cheng's parents separated. (Rumor said that Madame Yu was… now seeing the Peacock's mother. Would that make Yanli and the Peacock's marriage awkward???)

Three years ago, Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng went on a night hunt with some of their closest friends. Everything went smoothly until some men dressed all in black came upon them and took away their air until they were weak enough to be incapacitated. 

When they awoke, they were all strung up in different prison attuned to their unique weaknesses and strengths. Jiang Cheng was locked up in a metal cage underneath an ice-cold waterfall. Wei Ying, the best bender of them all (and no he wasn't bragging, that was the truth), was chi-blocked every hour. Later, Wei Ying would learn that chi-blocking blocked an element one by one. 

They wanted a ransom, and they negotiated with the Yunmeng sect day and day as the hostages grew weaker and weaker. 

One day, the captors had had enough. "Let's send back a finger as a warning," they said. 

Wei Ying's heart had stopped, a surge of new strength rushed through him, and then all the torchlight in the dim and damp cave went out. 

They screamed and screeched, pleading with some unknown entity to let them go, make it stop, please please please. 

And then, silence. 

The lights flickered back to life. All the captors were slumped over on the ground in various states of shock and horror. One had clawed at her face until long red rivers flowed freely and dripped onto the floor. 

"Wei Ying, what did you do?" 

Later, they realized that Wei Ying could bend the element of darkness. Everyone in that cave had been sworn to secrecy, but the secret was out, so someone must have talked. 

One short, sweet summer month after their triumphant return, Wei Ying ran away from home. People had already started talking on the streets of Yunmeng about someone with his description who darkbended. 

His instincts were proven right when he felt four men tracking him at the edge of a desert. He had snapped the neck of one of them (he had killed someone and buried the surrounding emotions) and found a scrap of a wrinkled letter with the Lanling emblem on the man's body. 

The Jins were trying to kill him. 

This thought couldn’t be spoken aloud thought, oh no, especially not in the letters he managed to send back home to Yunmeng. He couldn't worry them nor let them become entangled with his problems.

* * *

"What a coincidence that we should meet again." Meng Yao smiled, making his dimples more prominent. 

The Lan and their followers had been traveling briskly from Lanling to the port of Zhifu when some of the Lans came down with a case of bad stomach problems. 

(Strange considering that the Lans ate only the blandest, but cleanest food known to humankind.)

Lan Xichen himself was ill and Lan Wangji was now taking care of his brother in an inn room nearby. 

Meng Yao had invited Wei Ying to tea that morning in front of Lan Wangji, so how could he refuse? He wasn't close enough to be trusted if he were to reveal all that he knew. They were maybe friends but absolutely not the sort that you would trust with your life. 

"Is the tea to your liking? If it's not, I can ask the owner of this shop for something different." 

Wei Ying sniffed the aroma rising from the porcelain cup, detailed with swirling clouds broken by two dragons. Floral hints of dewy blossoms mixed with the richness of the earth. 

"This is lovely actually. Jasmine tea is my favorite." 

"Oh, really? I'll keep that in mind when we meet again." 

May we never meet again, Wei Ying thought, but he kept his face at his neutral which was, an admittedly kind of annoying, cross between a smile and smirk. 

"I have heard that you have a wonderful older sister, only three years older, due to be married this coming summer." Meng Yao's eyelashes fluttered as he looked down once and then back up. 

He almost spat out his tea. Almost. 

Hands shaking, he placed the cup back onto the table. "Sir Meng, last night's dinner was scrumptious. If I recall correctly, you ordered your personal chef to cook the main dish. I do wonder what the secret ingredient was?" 

"It is a secret." 

Meaning: you shithead, you'll never be able to prove that I poisoned the Lans. The ingredients have already dissolved into something untraceable. Or maybe he's bluffing. But to get evidence, he'll have to dig through and test with people's literal feces unless someone hid leftovers from last night. 

Wei Ying doesn't want to dig through people's shit tonight. 

"I have a request for you, Sir Wei. Now that our families will be joined through marriage, seeing as you consider your sister to be like blood, would you help me strengthen both our families? I know who you really are, so I have a few ideas on how you could repair your reputation." 

Meaning: do this or your sister or someone else you care for will pay the price. 

Wei Ying had been spending time digging up dirt on Meng Yao. He was Jin Guangshan's son sired on a prostitute, and people looked down upon that sort of thing, which was shitty, but Meng Yao was acting like a real bastard right now. According to a number of resentful spirits that he had asked, Meng Yao was in charge of the Jin's many morally bankrupt projects ranging from technically lawful to the truly illicit. He had personally given orders to lackeys who tortured, experimented, and killed. 

But Wei Ying couldn't use a ghost as a witness. So, he had dug around some more and asked the local street urchins for information. One girl said, while practically inhaling the meat bun he had bought for her, that she had seen him entering a brothel and leaving with slightly disheveled clothing. Someone had very briefly screamed. 

A girl orphan was not a good witness either, but he could build up a case if he found some more of them with the same story. 

Or so he had thought. The next day, that girl was found on the stairs to the backdoor of a nearby tavern.

Her throat had been ripped out by some animal. 

He stopped asking the street urchins. 

"Oh? What kind of ideas?" 

The ideas didn't sound so bad. In fact, some of the requests might be legitimate ones (delivering medicine to a village high up in the mountains, sending off some letters) that would only benefit the common people -- but that was only to throw Wei Ying off from guessing what his real aim was. 

The last two tasks were:  
1) Go clear out an infestation of armadillo sheep at a farm that was already on the way and Lan Xichen was already talking about helping out (probably alright)  
2) Grab a labeled package from one of the farmer's storeroom (dubious as hell. Maybe a cache of money or the ingredients for a bomb or something.)

* * *

They arrived at the farm and the farmers were a chatty but reverent kind of people, asking for help but always emphasizing that they would be rewarded for their help as best they could. They threw on a feast with all the best ingredients and meats that they could supply. 

"Aww, they're so, so cute!" Wei Ying shrieked as he rubbed his face in one of the koala sheep's extremely curly and soft fur. "I want one. I want them all! Oh, you're so squishy, Mr. Koala-Sheep, but I bet you'd smell real good sizzling on a grill with --" 

"Sir? Sir, please don't mess up my Miss Koala Sheep's fur up. And she’s not for eating. She's valuable merchandise," the farmer said with a twang, shooing away Wei Ying who stuck out his tongue and pulls down on one of his lower eyelids. The man cooed at his sheep and began brushing her with an ornate comb. 

Lan Wangji examined the sheep by taking one casual but always graceful stroll around the creature. His hair effortlessly swished in the air like someone's airbending behind him. Wei Ying stared at him through sheep curls and wondered how it'd feel to run his fingers through those silky locks. 

"This koala sheep is a male," he said like he's offended on the sheep's behalf for being mis-sexed. 

The farmer waved him off. "My missus and my sister and the other ladyfolk out here don't have any real reason to dress up, ya see? So we decided that it'd be fun if they dressed up all the koala sheep all fancy-like. That’s why we call them miss." 

"I see," he said.

Lan Wangji walked to a koala sheep next to Wei Ying and proceeded to bend himself like a nutcracker until his face too is inside the indescribable warmth and comfort of the koala sheep. 

"It is warm. Very soft. Mn." 

Laughing endlessly and with infinite fondness, Wei Ying planted his face into the same koala sheep as the one Lan Wangji is nuzzling his face in. They faced each other and Wei Ying peered at Lan Wangji's contented face, its features and harshness having been smoothed out by simple wooly warmth. Wei Ying can almost imagine that Wangji is just another young man like himself with the same desires for fame and girls and family. 

He reached his right hand out to brush back a stray lock of Wangji’s hair. 

At the touch, they both jumped as if struck by a bolt of lightning. 

But in the second before his fingers touched Wangji’s face accidentally, Wei Ying saw an expectant and hopeful gaze in his eyes. 

As though to say, please please come closer. Please make me not alone. Please touch me.

* * *

The plan goes like this: the armadillo lions are most active at sunset and sunrise. They're lazy, however and will straight up run away if they catch sight of hunters. 

So at sunrise, the benders will assemble at sunset and lay out some freshly butchered meat out in lowest parts of the tall grasslands where visibility is best. They will lie in the grass for camouflage and additional benders will hide in the tops of the tree-lined hills. The Lans might have rules against eating meat, but this will be for the purpose of saving lives, so it's alright. The meat will attract them and then they'll get to work culling the animals. 

"Hm, Lan Wangji, are we going to cull all the armadillo lions?" Wei Ying asked the night before the hunt. He sipped from cup after cup of dianhong tea in hopes of keeping himself awake all night. There was absolutely no way he'd be able to wake up tomorrow at the crack of dawn. Wei Ying had never been awake at the crack of dawn in his twenty-some odd years of his life. 

He nodded. 

"I read some old texts before about farming, so now I can't remember the specifics, but the author definitely kept on emphasizing that when culling larger animals from an area that you can't cull all the animals. Or else the place will lose its balance and it'll be overrun with pests, because the pests that were once eaten by the larger animals will now breed without limit. Or, it the animals you're culling ate another animal that ate the pests that ate the plants, the pests will be completely demolished which might cause other animals to die." Wei Ying shrugs. "Anyways, it's complicated." 

Lan Wangji considered it for a moment. "That is sound logic. But how are we to know how many to leave alive? And how are we to persuade the farmers? It is their lives that will be lost if any armadillo lions remain." 

There were formulas in the book, but they've all been lost to the passage of time. And besides, maybe it won't even become an issue? Lan Wangji and his brother were formidable benders, but they alone couldn't take out, from the reports, a few dozen armadillo lions. 

"I can't say how many, so let's try to leave as many alive as possible." 

He nodded and they set out to sleep for the night.

* * *

They all started to attack at the signal (a bright red flare), aiming for the fleshly vulnerable underbelly of the beasts. The first wave heavily injured maybe a third of them, but the remainder either fled or sprinted forward to where the attackers were, hoping for a taste of flesh or revenge. 

The more competent earthbenders formed a line and molded a thick earthen wall. The beasts pounded through or jumped over the wall -- the jumpers were promptly demolished with a skewer of earth, an icicle, or a jet of flame to their hearts. 

Then the fighting got chaotic. Orders, contradictory ones, rang through the air. A few archers landed lucky shots on the gaps between the beasts' armor. 

Wei Ying leapt and careened with his hands and feet from the body of one beast to another with gusts of air, finding that the teeth of an armadillo lion was strong enough to damage the armor of another. He would taunt an armadillo lion from atop another one and then jump off just as they pounced upon him with their foul and fearsome jaws. In this fashion, he made four of the beasts end each other. 

With less energy remaining, he built himself an armor out of earth and proceeded to fight hand-to-hand with some more lions. 

Finally, after what seemed like hours but had only been minutes, the lions stopped coming.

* * *

The sun beat down relentlessly and the air was sticky and humid, so when they put down the last of the armadillo lions -- a few had gotten away -- most of the men sat down under the shade of nearby larch trees. They drank of refreshments and talked openly, their tongues having been loosened by the day of fighting and hard labor. 

When Wei Ying slipped away wordlessly, he hoped that no one noticed him. If they asked, he could just say he was going to pee under a faraway tree. Performer’s anxiety and all that. 

The storehouse was unlocked and cool and pleasantly dry inside. If he hadn't been on urgent business, he would have lay down on the ground. 

His eyes scanned the space, only about ten zhang wide and twenty zhang long. The space was covered with barrels of wine, bags of rice, and other misc items at the front, and at the back were rows of shelves of items. 

He walked slowly down the rows, looking for a yellow package with a white paint mark in the middle. 

There! 

He grabbed the package and turned to face the entrance --

"What are you doing?" Lan Wangji said with a trace of hurt in his voice. He stood at the entrance of the building with the light silhouetting him, soft light blooming at his edges. 

He had hurt him, betrayed his trust. 

"My sister, she's sick and the package might have something that might make her better." A lie with a thimbleful of truth. Yanli had been, was still, a sickly person. If this package could make her better, he really would steal it. 

"If that is the case, then why did you not ask me for aid? I thought we were friends; you told me so yourself many times." 

The package's weight grew heavy in his left hand and he set it down. He chuckled a little. "I did, didn't I? I guess you can't be friends with a thief, huh?" 

"And why did you not just ask the farmers themselves? They might be willing to part with it after all that we have done for them." 

The gears in Wei Ying's head clicked and he realized: the package's contents didn't matter. It might be something terrible still, but the main objective was to make Lan Wangji lose his trust in Wei Ying. 

He couldn't tell Lan Wangji that Meng Yao had set him up. If they confronted the dimple-faced liar, he would merely say that he had no idea what they were talking about. 

Wei Ying sighed. "This looks terrible, I know. You have no reason to trust me but I don't know what's in the package. I suspect that it's something terrible but easy to convert to cash." He started to open the package. "I was set up by someone… someone that your family trusts. If I wanted to make a quick buck, would I steal --" 

Ashy, chalky powder fell out. Opium. 

Shit shit shit. 

"Were you using us as a cover for drug trafficking?" 

Honestly, this was a pretty ingenious plan on Meng Yao's part. Inside the Earth Kingdom, at the major cities and at the borders, were a series of checkpoints for contraband like opium. However, officers were only human and couldn't possibly check all the people -- doing so would make the travelers angry due to increased waiting time. 

And there was the matter of status. 

See, a random, lowly checkpoint officer couldn't possibly dare to search the retinue of the Light Bearer. 

It would be tantamount to accusing him of harboring criminals. 

If Wei Ying were a smart drug trafficker, he'd cozy on up to Lan Wangji and skip all the checkpoints. In addition, bribes were expensive and could sometimes fail. 

They walked back and he was released into Lan Xichen's custody. The package was released into Xichen's hands. He had done him the courtesy of not tying his hands and causing a scene at least. 

Wangji leaned over and whispered into his brother's ears. (For the first time since joining them, Wei Ying worried about his future. Would he be sent off to the Emperor to be interrogated for further information? Would he be given to the Jins to do as they saw fit? Would he be executed on the spot and then his family later notified?)

Blood rushed through him and the almost silence deafened his ears. Each breath he took was shallow and ragged. He made plans for escape but knew that they'd never let have out of sight after this. 

Finally, they stopped talking and Wangji turned away from him without ever looking back. Xichen spoke. "Wangji left you with me. Now, what are we to do with you? Let me hear your case. Come." He gestured at a spot farther away from everyone else. 

Wei Ying followed, cursing himself. His fate was now in Lan Xichen's hands. 

Wangji no longer wanted to look at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... uh... i don't know if i can make updates regularly? (i quake in fear at other writers who write for four hours at a time) but i'm definitely not abandoning this. i should also make a buffer. 
> 
> i have like a long list of things i don't like about my writing (and a few things i'm alright with), but i think the biggest concerns i have w/ the story right now is:  
> 1) Wei Ying is suuuuch a Maniac Pixie Dream Boy. at least for now.  
> 2) Lan Zhan is sooooo emotionally/mentally stunted/sheltered that it almost creates an uncomfortable power dynamic where one person knows who they are & the other person is like ??? i'm my own person ??? i get to make decisions ??? what are pranks ??? 
> 
> Oh, and the part where they're almost, almost touching was inspired by this poem: [End of Poetry](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/04/the-end-of-poetry)
> 
> Random fun fact: WY isn't afraid of dogs in this AU. he's still not a dog fanatic like JC tho. more of a cat person :P
> 
> And thanks for reading & leaving comments!!! ^_^


	7. Light of the New Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They talk and board a ship. Local area ship hands aren't paid enough for this shit.

**LWJ**

Wangji could not bring himself to look in the direction of Wu Ming and Xichen. 

Tipping his head upwards in an attempt to catch a wisp of a summer breeze, Lan Wangji peered up at the spotless blue expanse above. He shifted his body, taking care to maintain the proper posture while relaxing the body, but thoughts ran aimlessly down the corridors of his mind. 

Who was Wu Ming? 

So many rules this unknown man had broken and yet Wangji, bit by bit, as though he were a statue being carved out of bronze, being reborn by the hands of its maker, relaxed upon the rules. 

Were they ever friends? He trusted him so easily. 

And if Wangji were mistaken in his discernment of character, then how could he help his brother lead his people? 

Even after knowing that Wu Ming was probably a drug smuggler, he still could not hate him. 

Wu Ming might well be a traveler crashing onto the wrong path, but he made Wangji experience some happy and insightful new things. 

Wu Ming had a way of loosening people's lips until they talked freely. It was in this way that they had learned that a not-insignificant number of his retainers were reformed criminals. Sir Li with the wicked eyebrow scar stole Fire Nation ships and sold goods on the black market as a youth, but Wangji would have never guessed from the solemn, dutiful way the man acted now. 

(Should he judge Sir Li for his past follies? The rules said to not befriend a wicked man, but was Sir Li now a wicked man for what he had done in the past? 

And what of Wu Ming?)

Everywhere they went, Wangji had been cajoled to greet new people with a playful nudge from Wu Ming. And every time, something unexpected happened.

Wu Ming made Wangji feel alive as he had never before. As though he were not just a silent observer watching dimly from the back of an empty, silent theater. As though he were present and alive and up close. 

And Wangji wanted to see Wu Ming. Wanted to see him with a dull, throbbing ache in his heart like Wu Ming had been there all along and something that was a part of him had been taken away. 

So, he can't bring himself to hate him. Not completely, at least. 

Even if Wu Ming were a criminal, Wangji wanted to help him become a better person and find a better way. And then they could still be friends.

* * *

Hours later, his brother emerged to tell what would become of this strange man. They would first traverse more of the Earth Kingdom and then the group would split into two and one group would transport Wu Ming to the nearest provincial office for judgment. His brother would personally write a letter asking for leniency, but that was all he could do. It was the right thing to do. 

He did not see Wu Ming again until they finally arrived at Serpent’s Pass. A large commotion built up around the ticket's office and the crowd grew angrier by the moment, shoving and pushing each other without hesitation. Four well-built benders, even taller than Wangji, surrounded Wu Ming who wore restraints. The retainer in charge of logistics argued with the woman in charge. 

Wangji stepped away from his retainers to assess the situation.

"Madam, I understand that there's been a few delays due to recent weather conditions, but could you hand us our tickets?" 

The woman, dressed in stiff, high-collared, official looking green, adjusted her glasses, scratched her nose. "For a group of your size, you should have given us at least a month's worth of advance notice. No entry allowed!" 

She pushed back their tickets. 

Wangji made his way through the crowd. "Miss, I do believe that we sent a messenger hawk here at least one and a half months ago." Failing that, perhaps she would take a look at his headband and clothes and general appearance. 

"Well, unfortunately, we didn't get the message." She snorted. "Oh, and nice costume, young man. You're a little too handsome to be one of the Twin Jades, don't you think?" 

Too handsome? How could he be too handsome to be himself? He rustled around his pouch until he produced the family seal. 

"Here." 

She perused the intricate seal thrice over with a magnifying glass made out of a water drop. Each time her mouth clenched tighter and her expression became grimmer. 

"A-apologies! Lan --" 

"Wangji. My brother is preoccupied for the moment." 

"Sir Lan, This humble one apologizes for her mistake,” she said, kowtowing low and so quickly that she nearly cracked her head on the wooden counter. 

Wangji pretended not to notice. "Please try to expedite the process as much as possible." 

He walked up to Wu Ming’s guards and requested to ask some more questions of Wu Ming. They stepped aside. They weren't keen on the idea, but eventually agreed after Wangji agreed to be within a stone's throw at all times. And no funny movements. 

"I'm surprised you're talking to me still, oh Bearer of Light,” Wu Ming said, hands gesticulating wildly. “Won't people talk about you being seen with me? Didn't your uncle --" 

"My uncle did send a very sternly worded letter. And people won't talk if I'm not seen as partial or friendly towards you." He did not smile at him and stood the customary distance away. It was fine. 

"What do you want to know?" His metal wrist restraints clanged against each other as he swung his hands around. 

"I –“ He paused. “I thought you were my friend. Why did you do it? Why did you use me? Who are you?" 

"I still think of you as my friend but…” He shook his head. “There's no convincing you. I had no other choice. Just remember that your allies might not be who you think are, but there's no way you'll believe me. As for who I am, I can't say. You won't believe me or it'll only make things worse." 

Wangji had meant to convey to Wu Ming that he would still help him wherever he went, that he would help write a letter of leniency but when the time came to convey such sentiments –

The words died on the tip of his tongue. And nothing was left except his hurt and anger. 

"If you tell me about who you are, what your circumstances are, I will help write a letter to the Earth King pleading on your behalf,” Wangji said. 

Wu Ming laughed, whether in disbelief or humor it could not be determined, and said that it wouldn't be necessary.

* * *

The ship was of the traditional wooden design with three sails, not the mechanical marvels that the Fire Nation sailed upon. At the bottom was the wooden hold. The ship seated perhaps a hundred upon its decks if everyone were to be nestled close. The three sails were ribbed and articulated like the fins of a mighty fish and they were painted the usual bamboo green of the Earth Kingdom. A small Earth Kingdom flag flew from the largest sail in the middle. 

After they boarded the ship, and true night descended upon the land, people began to murmur and point at him. The sight of his glowing white hair must have caused the commotion. His brother, too, glowed faintly in the darkness, but his appearance was not so stark a sight, for he lacked the white hair. 

A few people walked up to him with their children in hand or arm and asked for a touch of his hair or a prayer. 

In the past, he always said no after a trio of particularly noisome children darted up to him and climbed his person like a tree, cheering out loud in between fistfuls of white hair that their mother had said he was a “very very lucky person”. 

Those children had pulled out so much hair that he feared he would have a bald spot. He did not fortunately. 

The situation looked calm, so Wangji made up his mind and knelt before the first little girl, asking for her name. 

She half-squealed out her name before restraining herself and giving her answer. 

A good marriage. To live long. To prosper in business. To become a well-known scholar. 

These were the wishes of these children. 

They were all very well and nice wishes to have, but he could not help but wonder if the parents should be asking for the children. He, of course, had wished to be as gracious, well-spoken, and skilled as his brother when he was but five, but he was not most children. Most children wanted a red wooden paddle toy or a skewer of tangy tanghulu or a viewing of a puppet show. They tended towards small, simple desires and to not take things day by day. 

“Little one, what is it that you want?” 

The child would always gaze back upon their expectant parent who smiled sweetly at Wangji but would whisper words to the child while maintaining a firm grasp on their arm. 

The child hesitated. Of course, the boy repeated what he had said before. “Sir Bearer of Light,” the young boy said with a respectful bow. “I wish to become a more filial son and to pass the scholarly exams when I’m of age.” 

As far as he knew, rubbing his hair or getting his blessing had no supernatural properties, but he did have real influence. 

“It is good to do your duties, but… sometimes a child should just do childish things.” He turned to talk to the parents, a tired looking couple with three more children. “Maybe you could purchase for your child some toys or –” 

“Mister, I’m too old for toys,” the boy huffed out. 

“Quiet, you!” His mother wrung his ears and apologized on his behalf. 

Wangji’s words went in one ear and out the other.

* * *

They had boarded the ship for many hours when someone pointed and exclaimed: "The moon! Wow, the moon's so big and full tonight." 

The night was chilly but not a whisper of a wind swept over the lake which shone like a mirror. A few other ships glinted and glimmered in the distance. 

Wangji broke from his reveries and stared back up at the moon. 

Did the moon just shake ever so slightly? And was tonight not the night of the new moon? 

He looked back at the moon and it _wiggled_. The moon _wiggled_. The crewmen sitting around him looked unperturbed though as if that was just what the moon did here.

“Sir,” he said in a low whisper to not cause a panic, “I just saw the moon wiggle. What is going on?” 

The bearded man slumped over. “Did it? You have a very keen eye.” 

“Sir, tonight’s the new moon.” He was sure of it now. 

“Oh!” He laughed darkly. “My crew, this whole lot, we-we’ve only got rocks for brains. Haha.” He hiccuped a few times in between. 

Wangji sniffed the air around the man’s mouth and brought it up to his nose. The stinging haze of alcohol. Was he drunk? Was the whole crew drunk? He could not tell if the swaying of the man’s motions was due to the rocking of the waves. 

“Sir, are you drunk?” 

The man gulped. “Oh, I might-a had a few drinks here and there. Standard procedure for dull boat rides. Don-don’t worry the rest of my crew’s got it handled...” 

But he just said that they had rocks for brains. 

“...and that there’s a-a lantern serpent. They’re real rare so you should admire it a real beaut when you see it.” 

“A what?” 

“Lantern serpent. Ne-neck so tall it reaches the sky. Long as a lake. Lantern that glows like the moon. Body dark as the night. Vanishes in and out of existence. Spooky fellow.” 

He wanted to plant his hand firmly onto his forehand. “How are we supposed to deal with this lantern serpent?” 

Were lantern serpents not tales of legend? They were supposed to be extinct! How was there one of them hiding out here? 

“Uh…” The man raised his right hand and swished it around in a circular motion. “It-it’s probably fine. The last time it just let us go away. Didn’t even maul us or anything.” 

The man was of minimal help, so Wangji went to find his brother who was chatting politely with the crew. 

“Oh, Wangji!” He practically ran at him and held him in what would have been a rib-crushing hug for a normal person and patted him on the back many times. “You’re always so s-serious.” 

Was Xichen _drunk_? By the heavens – he needed to go to sleep and find out this was all a dream. 

“Your brother took a tiny shot of baiju by accident. We’re so sorry!” A young looking man, the cabin boy perhaps, said by way of apology. 

Wangji sighed. “Brother, you should make your way inside the ship and go to bed. I will come with you.” 

He glowered at the rest of the crewmen. “What are you people doing? Getting drunk when you should be patrolling the waters? Do you not care for the safety of the people? What about your duties? What kind of –” 

“Hey, little lord,” a woman said, words dripping with disdain. “The captain stiffed us out of our paycheck last month. We’re not paid enough to care.” 

They had not received their paycheck? But what was money next to pride in work? Was this the way the rest of the world moved about: not in a clock-like elaborate dance but sloppy, improvised, and half-hearted? 

Maybe he was mistaken in telling the child to become less burdened and regimented. There was meaning and discipline in routine, not this – whatever this was. 

“There is a monster out at sea,” he began. 

“The last time we saw it, we just steered far away from it. Nothing happened.” She plopped her feet onto some stools. 

He grabbed his brother by the arms and helped him onto his feet (“Oh my! The moon is so round and beautiful! If only we had our instruments we could have a duet to salute the Moon Spirit!” “No.”). Every few minutes, his brother would make a break for it but eventually they made their way to inside the ship’s hold and he got his brother onto an empty bamboo mat. 

“Oh, I almost forgot! Here, a letter,” Xichen said in a sing-songy voice as he handed him a scroll by faint light. “It’s important.” 

Why was he being handed such a thing at such an inopportune time? “I’ll take care of it--” 

Just then, the ship tilted left hard. Something outside the room shattered. People screamed. Then it jerked hard right. Was pushed backwards. Then right again. 

“No, oh no, is the Moon Spirit mad at us for breaking the rules…” 

He laid his brother down. “You stay here. You’re drunk and will only get in the way.” 

His brother propped himself up by the elbow but then dropped like a stone. 

On the deck, there was pandemonium. The serpent had made four large impacts on the wooden deck. Thankfully, it must have been slow and laborious in its movements, because none of the people seemed to be injured beyond bruises. 

Now, the serpent lay in wait somewhere within the dark waters, but because it was a new moon, nothing could be seen. 

He lit a portable flame within his hand, but he could barely see past the ship itself even with the lanterns on deck. Seeing no other resort, he pulled within himself and lit the deck with the brilliance of daylight at noon. 

The serpent’s head, all grotesque and twisted like a deep sea creature, emerged with a gleaming pearl of light sitting in between its two dark eyes. It lunged at Wangji but he feinted for his right but moved right and it pierced the deck in that spot. His lightbending gave out.

More screaming and the head just grazed past a young woman whose leg was now bleeding. He ripped off part of his robe and made a tourniquet. 

A crewman sat to the side of the deck, still drinking, on their behinds. Wangji shattered with an icicle the glass bottle one member was swigging from and shouted at him to help. 

“You there! Help me evacuate the people. And you there! Help me gather everyone who’s an experienced water bender,” he hollered at them. They did as they were told as the serpent made two more dives onto the ship. 

Wangji gave more orders and directed the water benders to cover any of the holes in the ship with ice temporarily. He personally tried to maim the serpent whenever it got near, but it lunged erratically out of the darkness and he could not light the entire lake in search of it. 

The evacuation of the deck was going smoothly when he got more bad news. 

“Sir, the hull of the ship is barely holding up. And we can’t cover it with ice because it’s been depressurized so water’s seeping in.” 

He gave him a signal flare. “Send out a distress signal in case the ship goes down.” 

The crew woman did so and as the flare lit up the lake, Wangji realized that the serpent was just… gone. Disappeared into thin air. 

And his head ribbon was missing. 

Everyone on deck had expressions of palpable relief, but he rushed about to ask them about the ribbon but no one knew where it was. 

“Sir, it’s just a ribbon.” He placed a soft velvety thing in his hand. “Here, I have a white ribbon just like it and you can have it.” 

He held it in his hands, and then tied it around his head but it felt ill-fitting like a melody with a single wrong note. His head began to ache. He shook all over. 

He collapsed. 

“...Bearer… they call you…” 

“...many drownings here…” 

“...do you know…” 

Ghostly wails and whispers filled his head and he could not see. He opened his eyes and he saw only darkness of many shades and depths. Darkness pouring out of his fingertips and darkness pouring from his mouth and darkness pouring from his eyes. 

No one was around. 

In distress, he pushed himself backwards and tumbled to find himself face-to-face with a ghostly apparition of a skeletal woman draped in vapors. Nothing but empty eye sockets and sloughing flesh and clattering pearl-white teeth. 

“...little one, can you hear us...” She asked, her voice like scraping metal. 

Another one appeared out of nothing. How could he see in this darkness? “...not who you think you are…” 

“...not the Bearer of Light…” 

He was not the Bearer of Light? No, he must be, because then who else could it be? His brother mayhaps. 

But then he’d be nothing. 

He pulled himself together and hastened away from the apparitions but there was nowhere else to go. Everywhere was dark and nothing but the ghostly visions, though a few were kindly and beckoned to him with kindly words but he took them for false friends and dashed away again. He was fatigued, but when he placed his hand where his heart should be he found no steady thump-thump but empty air. He reached within himself and tried to find where the warm, gleaming light should have been and found nothing. 

He could not feel his own body. 

The voices got closer, more frenetic. 

“...stay with us…” 

“...lie down tired one…” 

“...rest…” 

The idea sounded pleasant enough, and he felt not sleepy, not tired in the physical sense, but like he knew that his flesh was done to the marrow, its purpose fulfilled. He felt himself slipping away and he did not feel afraid or sad or happy or anything anymore. 

“...Lan Wangji…”

“Wangji!” 

He felt a warm hand grab his own. All he remembered after was the feeling of falling onto a patch of sunny grass and gentle arms enveloping him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhh what's a consistent update schedule &&& how do you make titles?!?  
> sorry for still leaving you guys on a cliffhanger haha i swear nothing too bad happens


	8. Darkest Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (flashback) WY & LXC have a talk. (present) WY rescues LWJ and some unexpected people show up.

**WY**

Yesterday

They sat in the shade cast by the grove of trees. Lan Xichen looked at Wei Ying with a flat expression. A few of the Lan retainers looked in their direction, but must’ve been told off by Wangji, because they immediately looked away after a few glances.

Lan Wangji gazed away and he sat far away from the others as always, posture as graceful and assured as always. 

“Do you know what you’ve done? The punishments for drug smuggling are nothing to laugh at.” Xichen’s tone was calm and even, like a mother reprimanding their child. 

Wei Ying nods. Of course. “I know. And I don’t think you’ll believe me but I didn’t know what was in that package. And if I did… I would still have had to take it anyways. I had to.” 

“You refuse to tell us your real name and refuse to tell us why you tried to steal in the first place. Why should we trust you?” 

Wei Ying met Lan Xichen’s glance but then darted away. “You don’t have any reason to trust me. Speaking as another older sibling, if I met someone like me hanging around my little brother, I’d distrust them too. So, punish me as you see fit.” 

Lan Xichen could believe what he wanted. Perhaps he was a drug addict. Or he needed the money to pay off a debt or to help his family. Whatever the case, the Lan’s rules were clear: do not help those who have strayed from the righteous path. But Wei Ying’s conscience was clear. 

Xichen paused for a moment and his expression softened. “I see. In that case, I will put in a good word for you at the prosecutor’s office. I know a person or two in charge. And… are you being blackmailed?” 

Should he tell Lan Xichen about Meng Yao? They seemed to be good friends, and Xichen didn’t seem the type to discount the words of a friend, but he also seemed to be good natured and open-minded. 

But no, he couldn’t risk his family. Who knew what kind of tricks the Jins had up their sleeve? 

“No!” He said, just a little too abruptly. 

“So you are. By whom you cannot say, because you do not believe that we will see justice through. It’s quite alright; we Lans are not infallible after all. And, once again, you have my word that I will do my best to lessen your sentence. Perhaps the true culprit will be found, but I cannot find them if you give me no inkling of who they are.” 

Lan Xichen didn’t suspect Meng Yao in the least. It didn’t even cross his mind. He could’ve asked Wei Ying about his closest associates and dangle their names over him to see if it’d draw a reaction – but he didn’t. He wouldn’t. 

No matter, as long as nothing went back to the Jiangs and his parents and the rest of their clan. A change of topic was in order. 

Wei Ying coughed and brightened up. 

“You’re hunting for the Dark One. Say, are you sure that the Dark One is responsible for the Cloud of Darkness? The Cloud has been around for longer than he has – or so I hear.” But he did know, from poring over ancient texts, that there were ancient darkbenders, numerous enough to form their own sub-disciplines, who practiced their art and in those times, there wasn’t a Cloud of Darkness hanging around. 

“Is that so? So you disagree with the prophecy? Prophecies are prone to be taken in the wrong way due to their metaphorical and abstract nature.” 

“It’s not that I disagree with it, but more that, because I haven’t heard it myself, I wonder if the original meaning has been distorted altogether. Take, for instance, how the prophecy was never written down when the oracle came up with it and it was only written after the fact.” He shrugged and grinned. “Or so I hear.” 

Wei Ying watched Lan Xichen’s face closely. Did he feel any jealousy for having the honored position of Light Bearer being taken by his little brother? Jiang Cheng sometimes expressed… mixed emotions at being less favored than Wei Ying by Uncle Jiang. 

But there was none of that. “Is that what the common people say? I was not there myself, but I was told that only the oracle, Wangji, and my uncle were present at the time of the prophecy. Wangji was still a small child, barely able to compose sentences and my uncle did not have the implements for writing at the time.”

Was that so? What a convenient story. 

Wei Ying continued, deciding to push his luck. He had a habit of that. “So, humor me, and tell me, what do you think about the current situation between the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom?” 

“It’s tense.” 

“I wouldn’t call it that. More like a pile of kindling waiting for a spark.” Would he reveal the Lans’ plans? “If I may ask, if the two states shall go to war, what side would the Lans take?” 

“That can only be determined when and if the unmentionable actually happens.” 

A nice, empty answer. “This one merely asks, because he fears for the safety of his family within the Earth Kingdom. Though, of course, he would prefer there to be no war at all.” 

“You believe that we will be at war very soon.” 

“Yes, the Fire Nation’s government is highly centralized around Wen Ruohan and their military highly capable. The Fire Lord’s lived for a long time and has always wanted to ‘share his greatness with the world’ as he puts it. Such pretty words.” Wei Ying laughs a little. “And the Earth King is currently a child and the kingdom itself is practically a dozen little states all running semi-autonomously under a dozen banners. Some of them are even ruled by warlords. The people here fear more war, and besides, soldiers are heavily frowned upon as a profession, so to Wen Ruohan, it looks like easy pickings. If he pierces into the heavily populated areas, the people’ll quickly lose their fighting spirit and surrender.” 

It’s the right time to strike. 

“You realize that what you’ve just said could be misconstrued as treason?” 

“Only if the Earth King and his puppeteers were to ever hear of what I said.” And if they were ever close enough to do so, there would be more pressing issues to worry about. 

“And you’re wrong.” 

“Oh?” 

“Not all of the Earth Kingdom’s people abhor war. Although, I would not say they like it either. The Nies on the coasts will fiercely defend their land, though it may come at a heavy price. They are a hardy, stubborn sort of people. And the Jiangs, I hear, are also protective of their swamps and lotus-filled lakes, though many people still consider them interlopers from the South Pole.” 

It sounded as though Xichen still didn’t know who he was. Good. If he knew he was from Yunmeng, then he’d naturally make the connections to the rumors about his darkbending. 

“So it sounds like you’re stuck in the middle. You have friends on either side. Gusu Lan will remain neutral.” 

“I did not say so.” 

“But that’s what I think most likely.” 

“I can say no more.” 

The wind picked up and Wei Ying looked out at the endless fields of grass grown for the koala sheep that dotted the land. The animals mooed merrily and pranced after one another. Oh, to be a koala sheep. To think of nothing but eating and napping and prancing. 

Within a year, this field would likely be lit on fire. This area was the biggest producer of meat for the entire Earth Kingdom, so it held some strategic value. Especially if the Fire Nation decided to go for total war. And even if they didn’t, he doubted that the Fire Nation’s military leaders kept a tight watch around pillaging. When the head of a state was corrupt and megalomaniacal, that trickled down the chain of command, poisoning the whole system. 

But if the war were to be delayed even further, could that considered a good thing? It was just pushing off an inevitable confrontation. For years now, the Fire Nation had “pirates” (state-sanctioned pirates!) loot the Earth Kingdom’s coast. Occasionally, they’d even make their way in-land or to the poles. 

The Earth King’s innermost circle was always paid off to not say a word or make a move. Slowly over the past two hundred years, the Fire Nation chipped away at the Earth Kingdom’s borders and installed a number of colonies on the outlying islands of the Earth Kingdom and some remote parts of the border. Each claim was a stab at the integrity of the Earth Kingdom while its numerous minor clan leaders asserted their power and restored order over their land. That the kingdom still held mostly together was due to the efforts of the Water Tribe and Air Nomads which acted as peacekeepers and negotiators. 

The Northern Water Tribe, in particular (Jiang Cheng still got letters from distant cousins in the Southern Water Tribe, but their combined powers were minute in comparison), was well-known to be upholders of justice. They were also reluctant to act unless absolutely necessary. Their home was far away in the North and lacked the abundance of natural resources that the Earth Kingdom held, so they could afford to think of war as an abstract event that happened _elsewhere_ to _other people_. 

“Do you ever doubt, Lan Xichen? Doubt the righteousness of your actions.” 

“Of course, how could I not. I, as the clan leader, must present a determined and unwavering face in public or else my people would doubt me.” 

“I see. I, too, have mulled, except over my past decisions. All of the people I’ve hurt… This arrogant one begs another favor of you.” 

“Go on.” 

Lan Xichen was much too lenient, even willing to hear a prisoner fax poetic on the course of war and beg for favors. 

“When the war is over, or even if it doesn’t end, will you take Wangji to Tengjing? It’s many days south of here, quaint little village. There’s a guqin festival there and I know Wangji pretended not to, but he was definitely interested. He kept on asking questions about music and how the weather’s like there.” 

And his ears even turned a tinge red when –

Xichen smiled a little, not showing any teeth but with the edges of his mouth curving upwards. “I am not sure if… if his interest in the festival only has to do with the music.” 

Before, Wei Ying had imagined going with Lan Wangji to Tengjing, just the two of them. He’d show him around town and talk all day and night long about everything and nothing. He even imagined them running, hand in hand, through the hollow roads that chimed a melody when you ran over them just so and how Wangji might show a smile, just for him. 

“Oh? Tengjing also has good food. Pretty girls.” 

Xichen frowned, a small crease forming between his two straight elegant brows, and sighed. “I do not mean… Never mind. Now is not the time.”

Present

When the ship had been attacked by the serpent, spirit, whatever the hell it was, Wei Ying used the panic to slip away from his guards. Truthfully, he had been able to break out of his hand restraints the whole time – such sloppy work, yes, hand restraints prevented most benders from bending but the only sure way was to block their chi – so he shattered the restraints by dropping the temperature around them suddenly by chilling the water in the surrounding air. It took a while for the restraints to completely break.

He ran to the deck and found it engulfed in a strange dark mist. The few strangler crew members on deck were in a state of shock and inching away.

“H-he’s trapped in there,” one of them said, pointing at the mist. “The Bearer of Light.” 

He leapt into the mist. 

The sights and sounds within weren’t unfamiliar to Wei Ying. When he had first come upon his darkbending powers, he had summoned a mass of darkness, though it wasn’t as large as this one and it had been during the daytime. He had wandered a never ending void with aching limbs until a kindly voice, that of a spirit of a nun, came upon him and calmed him and told him that the void was a part of him. When he came to accept that death was a part of life would he finally be able to leave, and she coaxed him with a strangely familiar voice until he left. 

He found Wangji, dazed and confused, and caught him as he fell to the incorporeal floor. Wangji was feverish and his entire body flickered between gleaming like the full moon and pure inky black and every shade in between. 

“Can you hear me?” 

Wangji mumbled something incoherently. 

Wei Ying would have to do this alone. He sat down and concentrated. Darkbending was not swift and ever-changing like airbending nor flowing and adaptive like waterbending. Nor was it stubborn and forceful like earthbending or piercing and alive like firebending. 

It was… The opposite of alive? Slow and sedate, full of emptiness, the lack of something, but also a state of being in of itself. Like early morning mist upon the mountain, able to obscure an entire mountain, but so fragile as to dissolve under the touch of sunlight. Always present, hanging in the background, if you only knew where to look. 

He pushed out tendrils of consciousness into the mist, feeling it out. Lan Wangji had summoned souls that had died (drowned mostly, poor souls) within the lake or on Serpent’s Pass and also… numerous, more unusual spirits. Darkbending wasn’t like the other bending in that it also manipulated the energy of the dead and the dead were conscious and could fight back. 

Sweat built up on Wei Ying’s forehead and on his neck. The spirits within the mist didn’t want them to leave. 

“Oh, is it you, little one?” A familiar old voice asked. 

The nun appeared out of the mist. She wore a pair of large bronze circular glasses, had the partially shaved head of the female airbenders, and wrapped a burgundy robe around herself. 

“Is it you, granny?” Wei Ying had called her that the last time they met. 

“Yes. I believe your friend here has lost something that belongs to him.” Her smoky hands dropped a white ribbon into Wei Ying’s hands. “This is the correct one.” 

Wei Ying felt the soft white ribbon embroidered with clouds and almost dropped it. The ribbon prickled at his flesh as though he had been electrocuted. Something in the fabric itself or perhaps a blessing after its construction gave it special properties to oppose something within him – his darkbending. 

So why did Wangji need to wear this ribbon? 

Unless – unless Lan Wangji, the Bearer of Light was a latent darkbender. And they needed to hide the fact. 

He had heard tales of darkbenders, not just dead ones from the past, but ones that lived in the shadows in the present day. It was possible that he wasn’t the only darkbender around. He didn’t know where his own darkbending came from – his mother had been a perfectly normal bender that mostly favored airbending. Was it just a random mutation? 

What did that mean for the prophecy? He had always thought it was a load of hogwash but Wangji –

Wangji would be devastated. 

Sweeping his thoughts and questions away, Wei Ying untied the ribbon already on Wangji’s head and retied the proper one. 

His fever died down and the mist’s strength dwindled. Wei Ying parted away the remainder and coaxed away the remaining spirits, pleading with them one by one to go where they came from. 

The dark mists cleared and it was though the world was reborn from nothing. 

“Is it over?” Someone asked as they poked their head out, crouched behind some boxes. 

“Oh thank heavens, the mists are gone.” 

A few people bent down on their knees, pulled out prayer beads, and began to pray in thanks. 

Wangji stirred within Wei Ying’s arms and Wei Ying pressed back the urge to push back his stray strands of hair, now gleaming white again. 

They hollered and the people came back on deck. 

“Traitor! We’ve been lied to! I saw everything!” A shrill, annoying voice called out. The accompanying person walked out from behind a stack of boxes. He had a cheap, forgettable face, but he wore the clothing of the Lans. 

“And who are you?” Wei Ying asked, helping Wangji up onto his feet. 

“Wu Ming?” Wangji asked. 

“Shh, not now.” He pressed a finger to his mouth. 

“I am Su She, of the mighty Gusu Lan –” 

“Su She, you’re not of the main bloodline, not even a branch family member, you can’t say –” 

“Quiet! I am Su She, of the Northern Water Tribe and I saw these two darkbend with my very eyes. According to the prophecy, we should execute them on the spot. Of course, Lan Wangji will be given a proper trial first and the proper rites, as is proper – but the other one must die now!” 

“Su She, you can’t – Here comes Lan Xichen.” 

Xichen appeared before them, all regal and noble in bearing. He didn’t look surprised. He didn’t look surprised? 

“Brother, I am not sure of how this happened,” Wangji said. 

“I think we should execute that one on the spot, as was described by the prophecy,” Su She said, although no one asked him. 

“I don’t think we should just execute them without due process,” a woman said in a shaky small voice. 

The people around them nodded but no one else spoke up and people started trying to talk over each other. 

“Yes! Execute them on the spot! Surely Clan Leader Lan wouldn’t want a traitorous brother to stain their fine lineage?” A slimy fat finely dressed man barked. 

“No, I do not think that is a good idea. We should –” 

“Kill him, he’s an agent of the –” 

“I don’t think you should, think of the children, what’ll that –” 

“End him already, we’re so close –” 

Su She fidgeted in his Lan robes. A crowd had formed before the two of them and he walked closer to the front of the crowd. 

“Please, could we restore order and talk –” 

“The prophecy said that if we just kill him it’ll all –” 

“How can there be two of them?” 

“Hm… that’s a good point. Maybe one of them’s fake?” 

“Enough!” He took out his sword and swung it forward. 

Wangji collapsed, coughing up blood and bleeding from the chest. He took the hit meant for Wei Ying. 

“Wangji!” Xichen cried out, eyes wide open with fear, as he hurried to his brother’s side. “Stay with me.” A huge wave swept over the deck and when it left, an icy cage held Su She in place. 

“Maybe if we kill the other one, the cloud’ll go away?” 

“And I heard the Fire Nation put a bounty on their heads!” 

The crowd was quickly turning around them and Xichen moved to protect them from the crowd. 

A sudden gust of wind gushed over the deck and with it came a thick fog that covered everything. All the torches on deck went out and a thin layer of ice formed to cover the wooden deck. 

In the near-total darkness, people tried to ignite flames within the palms of their hand, but then the ship began to sway side to side unnaturally and people extinguished these flames to regain their footing. 

Something flew in above the ship and it sneezed sending large droplets raining down. 

It was Feifei, his mother’s sky bison who had a persistent case of sniffles even as an adult sky buffalo. A thud rang out as it landed on deck. 

“A-xian, we’ve come for you!” Yanli’s voice called out to his left. 

Someone threw a pillar of flames at them but missed. The ship rocked violently again and Yanli’s face contorted with effort before the light disappeared. 

He grabbed Lan Wangji as gingerly as possible and made for the sound of her voice. A rough but sturdy pair of arms carried him away; Jiang Cheng was here too! 

He could almost cry out of relief and disbelief and worry that his siblings had come to save the day, but now wasn’t the time. 

They helped him up the side of the sky bison – he slipped a few times as the ship moved – and then Feifei launched herself off of the deck. Jiang Cheng took control of navigation, while Yanli collapsed to rest momentarily. 

She got back up and Wei Ying created a small flame for light. 

“Sister, you need to rest –” Yanli was a powerful waterbender, maybe even more powerful than Wei Ying, but she almost never exerted the full extent of her powers. She had been born with a congenital condition of the blood and was always healing herself to stay alive. Every moment she didn’t spend rejuvenating herself was a moment she got sicker and closer to death’s door. 

“Hold him here and make sure he doesn’t move.” She felt his pulse. “It’s… it’s not looking good. But we must try.” She pressed her hands encased in a layer of water from the Spirit Oasis and began to heal Lan Wangji’s wounds. 

The sword had pierced through and damaged Wangji’s kidneys. The blood still oozed out of the wound at an alarming rate, even after Yanli instructed Wei Ying in applying direct pressure to keep the fluids inside. 

Wei Ying felt beads of tears form as he prayed silently to the spirits, to the Moon Spirit that had once saved Wangji’s live, to save his life again. 

In the depths of a moonless night, things had never looked darker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, in the original outline, i was gonna have Su She try to stab LWJ on purpose... but that seemed too stupid even for me, so noooo. (i am pretty glad i tagged this fic w/ villains with negative-IQ already :P)
> 
> oh & when LWJ takes the hit for WY, you can imagine it happens in super cheesy slow-mo like in a korean drama or something haha 
> 
> and yes, JYL & JC showing up is like the very definition of Deus Ex Machina
> 
> come say hi at [Twitter](https://twitter.com/welp_so)? i hope everyone's doing ok in these times


	9. Your Name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> LWJ is in the Spirit World, trying to find a way back. He gets back and has a long conversation w/ WY. Preparations for war are made. 
> 
> (or: hey guys!!! ~there's only one bed~)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for any typos, grammatical errors, etc (i'm just losing the will to edit things anymore)
> 
> i ppprobably should've split this up into two chapters buuut oh wells.

**LWJ **  
****

Lan Wangji blinked. He had just been stabbed in the middle by Su She, he had been sure of that, so how was he now sitting on top of a mountain? 

He looked down and instantly, felt faint terror at the dizzying height of the drop from here to… wherever the bottom was, because he could not see it. Heavy mists obscured the bottoms of the mountains, and there were many, in irregular, jagged, knife-life shapes. The mountain, or rather, more like a single pillar jutting out of the earth that he was on, was like all the rest. Everything was lit up in the half-light of dawn or dusk. 

A human-faced giant crow cawed at him with a leering face and then dove down into the mists. He blinked and looked back to find nothing. 

"How are you feeling?" The nun asked, materializing out of thin air. She wore her silver tresses simply with no adornment and the middle section of her hair had been shorn clean off with the blue tattoos of the Airbenders on them. 

"Who are you?" He asked, trying to make himself look big and solid. 

"We're in the Spirit World, Little One and you are grievously injured." 

The events of the previous day rushed back to him. The lying, the lantern serpent, the dark mists, the stabbing. 

He had been stabbed!

He clutched his hand to his chest at the area where he had been stabbed, but found no signs of a wound. Just a smooth unblemished skin. 

She chuckled. "The body you're touching is your spiritual one, which as you can see, is perfectly intact." 

"My physical body, how do I get back to it? And where am I?" He needed to get back to his real body and talk things over with Wu Ming. He might have stolen drugs, for whatever purpose still unknown, but there was no doubt in Wangji's mind that Wu Ming had selflessly gone into the darkness and saved his life. They could forget about the past events and clear his name. 

She swept her orange robes and gestured over the land. "This is the Spirit World. And to go back… I'm afraid I don't know. I am now just a spirit, completely separated from my aged physical body, so the way I traverse the worlds won't work for you." 

He looked at her with determined eyes. "Then teach me what you do know and I will adapt." He blinked in surprise. "I apologize for my brusqueness, as I even forgot to ask for you name. I am Lan Wangji." 

"Wangji. I know who you are. As for who I am, it seems that I have forgotten." 

Wangji bowed low before her. "Thank you, teacher." 

"There's another matter I need to warn you about: there's two of you." 

"Two of me?" 

"Yes, your soul split into two when you were stabbed. It's wrecking havoc down below as we speak. If you leave half of yourself behind, I don't know what'll happen to you, but it can't be good." 

"So, I need to merge with my other self before I can go back?" 

She nodded. "And one final thing: you cannot use your bending here." 

"Then how will I lower myself to the land below?" 

"I can bring you there." 

"Teacher, do you think that I am… bad?" He had darkbended, so how could he be the Bearer of Light, the hope of the world? His identity was a lie, but as the Lan rules dictated, he was supposed to find a way to help the world. 

What if the right way to help was to find a way to exorcise himself from the world? 

"Teacher, do you think that darkbending is inherently bad?" The prophecy stated that the Bearer of Light would slay the Bearer of Darkness -- and the Cloud of Darkness vanquished. 

But Wu Ming could darkbend, and he used it to help Wangji. He was… maybe not a person perfect in virtue but a person who only had good intentions. He met people with an open heart and only wanted to make other people laugh or smile. He did not deserve to die. 

Wangji would protect Wu Ming wherever they went and speak on his behalf. It was, the Rules, perhaps were not absolute. 

"What do you think? I don't want to influence you before you make your own mind up." 

The Rules were laid out like this: either a sign pointing towards away from immoral behavior or towards moral behavior. "Make sure to act virtuously" was one rule, but who decided what was virtuous? Did the circumstances matter? "Be easy on others" was another rule; did that mean that he was meant to look charitably on others' actions? "Honor good people". 

What was good? And what was bad? 

His whole life he had followed these rules, not quite mindlessly, but half-heartedly. He memorized the rules and remembered the ways that the Elders chose to comply with them. Some rules were emphasized and brought up more often, especially the ones about how to conduct oneself before others. He believed that the Elders had some special wisdom gleaned from their years, that they knew best. 

But now after going on this journey, he could see how the Rules were full of contradictions and how the Elders used the Rules to maintain power and prestige. "Perform acts of chivalry". The Elders sent men to fight against the Fire Nation's pirates, but only after other clans had already committed troops. When the others did not speak up, the Northern Water Tribe was silent too. Was that upholding the value of justice? To speak softly of noble deeds, but stay holed up far north and only venture forth when it was safe? 

"I… I do not think that it is evil or good in of itself. It just is." 

She hummed to herself. "Go on." 

"I was thought that bending was a gift from the gods." 

She laughed. "Oh, is that what they teach you?" 

"But now I think it is just a tool and the intentions of the person wielding it matters most." Wu Ming had used his powers to save his life. 

"Is that so?” 

She grabbed him and they dropped like a stone, the wind howling in their face, until she unfurled her arms which had grown two enormous dark brown wings. 

"We're here." 

They stood on a ledge of rock at the side of a mountainous pillar. The ledge was quite long and thick enough for two carts to pass by. 

About a li away, a little boy faced the wall with his back turned to Wangji. Wangji grabbed him and the boy turned around. 

Of course, he had his face. The little boy with pudgy cheeks and round wide amber eyes looked to be about six. 

“Come now,” Lan Wangji said, holding out his hand and lowering himself to his boy-self’s level. That was what Wu Ming had done, although this was not a normal boy. It might still work. 

“No. Don’t want to. I am waiting for someone.” He sat with his legs folded underneath him. 

“Waiting for whom?” 

“Mother. She said she would come.” 

“You should not wait any longer. Mother has passed away.” 

“No,” his little self said, sitting up taller. “She said she would be here. That we would escape together. She promised.” He sniffed and dabbed away teardrops forming at the edge of his eyes. 

Wangji sat across from the boy and took his small rounded hands in his own calloused ones. “Listen. I am you, but many years older, and though you might find yourself lonely, even if mother is never coming back, I swear that the loneliness will fade with time. Just a little.” 

The boy frowned and snatched his hand away like it was hot coal burning away his flesh. “You don’t remember, do you?” 

“Remember what?” 

“Why we needed to run away. What they changed about the prophecy. You – you think you’re the Bearer of Light.” 

“I – I am not sure who I am, but I know that I need to return to the world.” 

“Don’t you care about your past? About the people who hurt you, don’t you want to pay it back?” 

Lan Wangji thought himself not a vengeful person, but clearly, his younger self was different. “I do, but the present problems are more important. Maybe another time.” If there would be another time. 

“Very well, take my hand.” 

They took each other’s hands, said their good-byes to the nun, and disappeared in a beam of pure light.

* * *

“He’s awake! Oh thank the spirits, he’s awake!” An unfamiliar girl with her hair in twin buns called out. “A-ying, he’s awake!” 

Bright sunlight pierced his eyes, so he held his hands up to shield them. Wu Ming’s characteristically wild hair poked into his peripheral vision. 

“You’re awake! I would hug you, but you might not like that and also, you’re still injured.” 

“How- how long… was I unconscious?” The words stuck to the roof of his mouth. His muscles might have atrophied from lack of use. 

“A week and a half, listen I’m so glad, because now my sister can get some real rest.” He helped him up from his position slumped up against a snoring sky bison. 

They stood on the top of a foggy mountain, not unlike one of the ones he saw in the Spirit World. In the distance was dozen Airbender temples, square buildings topped (or bottomed in this case?) with sloping ridges, that hung upside down from the cliff side. 

“I don’t mean to trouble you, but there’s no one else to ask. Are you a healer? My sister’s condition is getting worse and she did sort of save your life.” 

“I am.” 

“Excellent! Now try to help her while I get help from that air temple over there. We were originally going here, because it’s rather secluded and you weren’t waking up, so we thought they might know what to do, but now she needs medical attention.” 

Wu Ming climbed aboard his sky bison and cooed to her about all the delicious apples she’d receive on the way back until she lazily flew up, snot trailing down from her nose. 

Wangji pulled up his sleeves and got to work examining the tired girl in purple, Jiang Yanli. She must be, judging from the purple and the lotus designs. He pulled all the moisture from the surroundings and laid his hands on her arm dotted with small red circles near her wrist and examined within. Her vital organs seemed normal but she had small growths around her lymph nodes in her right underarm – 

“She has a blood cancer, the kind that starts in her bone marrow, but now, obviously, you can see that it’s spreading,” the boy in purple said. 

This was far beyond any kind of healing he had done before: broken bones, closing of open wounds, burns. This required specialized help from medical professionals. 

“You are right and I am not sure how much I can do.” 

“Do what you can. Focus on suppressing the cancer’s growth.” 

“If you can’t, it’s alright,” Jiang Yanli said, still trying to smile despite the pain. It was hard to believe that she and Jiang Cheng were full-blooded siblings. 

To do that would be the opposite of helping the burns heal, quickening the multiplying and splitting of cells. Maybe he could. 

He laid his hands atop her right arm and thought of cool, still ice and the calm that washed over the tundra in the dead of winter when even the bear-seals went to slumber inside igloos made of snow and ice. 

“Thank you for helping my sister, but this needs to be said. I don’t like you. I don’t trust you. The only reason you haven’t been left behind is because my siblings insisted.” 

“I took a sword for your brother.” He did not mean to brag, but he wanted Jiang Cheng to know of where his allegiances lied. 

“And yet you don’t even know his name.” 

“Would you tell me?” He was not a Jiang by name, and he had not heard of any cousins or –

“Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

* * *

The nearby air temple was gracious enough to host them for a night. They evacuated Jiang Yanli at once and prescribed herbs and tonics to her, but advised that she visit a waterbending healer soon for her health. 

“When we leave, don’t tell anyone that we were here – or better yet, scatter to the wind and go to another air temple. One of the more remote ones,” Wu Ming said to those who listened. “We might’ve been followed.” 

“You worry for us, but I would not. Airbenders are pacifists not by nature but after great amounts of discipline. We can fight,” the leader of the temple said. 

“And Baoshan Sanren, would you happen to know where she is?” 

They shook their heads, saying that she had ascended to some distant peak many years ago in search of enlightenment. She never came back. 

“Now what are we going to do?” Wu Ming said, as they walked into the room they were assigned for the night. His siblings stayed in rooms across the hall, although Wangji was sure that Jiang Cheng was watching over her as they spoke. 

The room’s walls were carved from the mountainside and a series of elaborate chimes and pipes pulled in a steady stream of warm air at a constant rate. The single window’s bamboo frame rattled periodically and there was one single bed. 

One bed. Two people. 

“I think there’s been a mistake; I’ll go back and ask for another room.” 

“No, I can sleep on the floor.” He did not want Wu Ming to leave, but found saying that out loud to be too forward. 

“No, I’ll sleep on the floor. You’re injured, it’s only right.” And he plopped right down onto the floor, taking half of the blanket. 

Until he realized that the blanket could not be ripped in half. 

“Actually, you know what, I am going to ask them –” 

Just then a voice piped through the room, telling them that it was curfew time and the time for sleeping. 

“Darn. Guess not.” 

“You can have the right half,” Wangji said as he took his sword and placed it in the middle of the bed. 

“Pfft, wow, you don’t need to protect my virtue,” Wu Ming said, pitching his voice upwards. “I’m not some maiden about to be married off.” 

“You may not be a maiden but you have virtue.” 

“You really are the best,” Wu Ming said, voice drifting off, half yawning. “You’d even defend someone like me.” 

“I am only defending the respect that is owed to you.” 

“I’m not who you think I am,” he said wearily, patting his blanket until it laid flat. 

“I am not who I thought I was either.” 

“No, that’s different. You didn’t know. I’ve killed people before.” 

“Do you… feel guilty about what you did?” 

“Yes – no – I felt only relief at first. Because it meant they’d finally stop chasing after me. At least at first.” Wu Ming turned his body away. “But then, later, I remembered that they probably had families. Just like me. Or, if they didn’t, if they were orphans like my mom, if they were forced into hunting me down by circumstance and need, then that was an injustice too.”

Wu Ming was conflicted, Wangji knew, but he felt his emotions deeply and he weighed his actions with gravitas. He was not only flippant cheer but also capable of grave seriousness. 

He took a deep breath and continued. 

“So, yes, later I felt guilty, and then I felt guilty for feeling guilty. Because I chose to end their lives. I had them by the throat. I could’ve just chosen to knock them out. But I didn’t. And I’m not sorry for ending their lives, because they were coming after me.” 

To end a life in this manner – he wondered what his uncle or his brother would think. 

Wangji forced his weary body up and turned to face Wu Ming. 

“That is… I do not know what to say.” 

“And I’m not a drug trafficker, but I wasn’t entirely truthful about my motives. I didn’t save you out of the goodness of my heart. I wanted to befriend you, so that you could clear my name. And if you didn’t – I – I don’t know what I would’ve done. Maybe ruined your good name or manipulated you in some other way. So, Lan Wangji, since you’re mostly healed up, you can go home tomorrow.” 

The words blasted at his face, but Wangji did not consider them deeply, only seeing that Wu Ming was finally coming clean and trying to be honest. That was the past after all. 

He laid down next to Wu Ming while letting his long locks of white hair drop like a cascading waterfall and patted his wild, unruly hair. 

“I am staying.” 

“Why?” Wu Ming finally turned to gaze at him with wide soulful silver eyes. 

“Because my family will almost certainly remain neutral in the future, and that – that is not what I believe in.” 

What did he believe in? To uphold justice, but his own moral compass was faulty, so he only knew to look at another. 

And because I believe you are good in a fundamental way, he wanted to say. Because when I think of justice, I think of you. Because when I waver, I know you will help guide me. 

“You’re staying,” he said, voice almost cracking out of disbelief. 

“Yes, and…” His voice faltered, heart palpating. 

“And?” Wu Ming asked, voice dripping with honey, as he looked up at him with a fluttering fan of eyelashes, drawing ever closer. 

“I would like to know your name.” He could not breath. 

“Wei Ying. You may call me Wei Ying.” He was so close to Wangji now that their noses were almost touching. Their breathing mingled in the air and he caught Wei Ying absentmindedly licking his mouth. 

He gulped. 

“You can call me Lan Zhan.” No one called him that anymore, not even his brother. It was like an outer layer to his being had been cast away. 

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying said as he pressed a feather-light kiss to his collarbone with the reverence of a prayer. And Lan Zhan drank it in like he were a man dying of thirst. “Lan Zhan.” His neck. “Lan Zhan.” His collarbone. It was like he was melting into the velvety, soft blanket and the touch of Wei Ying’s lips. 

“Wei Ying.” He kissed him clumsily on the corner of his mouth. 

Wei Ying’s eyes went wide with surprise and he turned to cover his face with his hands. “Oh, ha! I didn’t know you’d do that. I’m sorry, I didn’t even ask you first.” 

“Wei Ying, you have my permission.” And in the future. He opened his arms for Wei Ying who peeked out from behind his fingers, finally letting his hands down. He swept him up so that Wei Ying was secured safely within his arms, while Wei Ying shook nervously. “But for now, sleep.” 

“Yes, but tomorrow, I get to be the big spoon.” 

“Big spoon?” 

“Lan Zhan, you fuddy-duddy, a big spoon, you know, the person who’s on the outside…” 

And they talked all night until Lan Wangji finally felt sleep beckoning him.

* * *

“So where do we go from here?” Wei Ying asked at breakfast the very next day. He had noticeable eye bags and Wangji felt a pang of worry and guilt. 

They were poring over a large map and tensions were running high. 

Though the Air Temple was secluded, news of the outside still trickled in. The Northern Water Tribe had declared that the Dark Lord had kidnapped the Light Bearer after causing him bodily harm. The Yunmeng Jiang clan had been accused of conspiring with the dark forces and were being hunted down or imprisoned as they spoke. Since the Yunmeng clan was still part of the Earth Kingdom, although largely autonomous, the Fire Nation saw this act as a pretense for war. The filth and rot of the Earth Kingdom needed to be purged, and what better way than by fire?

The Fire Nation was preparing to wage war against the Earth Kingdom. The other states remained neutral. 

“We’ll drop off A-jie here, at Meishan, where grandma lives. They must have healers and they’ll protect and hide her,” Jiang Cheng said. 

“You should go with her,” Wei Ying said. “And that’s where they’ll go looking for us first. They must have our family genealogies, even mine, for reference to see where we’ll go. We need to go to someone with no obvious ties to us.” 

“A-ying is right. We should stick together for the time being.” 

“What about the Northern Water Tribe?” 

“I –” He weighed the options, but considered his past self brimming with secrets. “I do not know if they will aid us or lock us up. I am not who they think I am. I know my brother would help, but he is only one person and there are the elders.” 

“So, cross that off the map.” 

“Southern Water Tribe?” 

“That’s too far and they might be rounding them up as well.” 

An awkward silence stretched out at the table. 

“We could hide in the swamps for a while until we get about our bearings.” 

“Hm, that’s a good idea. If we lay low, we won’t be spotted by airships –” 

“But Feifei can’t fly that low. She’ll get tangled up in the trees and vines.” 

“We could… leave her behind in the monastery.” 

“Hell no! I’m not leaving my mother’s sky bison!” 

“What about Ba Sing Se? Maybe we can rally the Earth King into fighting spirit…?” 

“No, last time we had an audience with the Earth King… we uh… had a little accident.” 

The two brothers chuckled anxiously as they shared a glance. At the very least, the tensions were being cleared out. 

“Someone –” Jiang Cheng poked Wei Ying in the ribs. “said that his pet bear was fat and needed to go on a diet.” 

“What, it was the truth?!?” And Wei Ying swung his whole body like a pendulum into Jiang Cheng’s direction, making sure to whip him in the face with his ponytail. 

Lan Wangji struck the table to redirect their attention, although he felt the ghost of a smile on his face. 

“Qinghe is still within a week’s ride by sky bison and Nie Mingjue might be sympathetic to us.” 

“And A-cheng has been exchanging letters with his little brother for a long time ever since –” 

“Shut up!” He whacked him with his chopsticks on the side. 

Jiang Yanli smiled at Wangji and gave both of her brothers a look. They stopped. “Are we sure that Nie Mingjue will shelter us? I know he detests the Fire Nation, but he doesn’t hold the Earth Kingdom in high regard either.” 

“He’ll hear us out at least and besides.” Jiang Cheng’s cheeks reddened. “If Nie Huaisang asks it of his brother, he’ll probably do it.” 

“So, Qinghe it is.”

* * *

They were making good time now on Feifei and so far had only seen a few Fire Nation airships in the surrounding airspace. They circumvented these airships by flying at night or in the early hours after sunset. Everyone, except Jiang Yanli, her siblings had insisted, were on a rotating night watch. He was awake now as the sun broke over the horizon, spilling her rosy hues over the land. They were far above the ground and hovering between layers of pillowy wispy clouds. 

His stab wound still hurt now and then again especially when he attempted to swing his sword. But now, the superficial parts of the wound, at least, was healed and a scab was forming. 

“You are awake?” Wangji said with incredulous eyes as Wei Ying roused from slumber. 

“M-hm.” He stretched his arms. “I had a really good dream and I saw you.” Wei Ying beamed at him and it was like a second sun glowed just for him. 

Did he not realize that did to his heart? He turned away in embarrassment, unable to meet his half-lidded eyes. 

“Hey, Lan Zhan, if you don’t mind me asking. You can say no; I won’t be offended. How… do you feel? About everything? About –” 

“Not being the Bearer of Light. I feel… confused.” 

“Confused?” 

“Everything that I have been working for is a lie. The letter my brother wrote to me tells me that he has been keeping secrets from me for a long time and that our uncle has been complicit in it too.” 

Wangji filled Wei Ying in on the details. 

The letter had been written in a hurry. It told him that they had known that he could darkbend since birth, and that he had nearly died as a baby, not due to any condition, but because a nursemaid was convinced that she could help end the endless calamities of the Cloud of Darkness if only she could end his infant life. His uncle had stopped her from plunging the knife into his heart, but the damage had been done. 

This incident and one after that (which did not succeed) were quickly covered up, but the Elders of the Water Tribe knew what he was capable of. 

And that his mother was a darkbender like himself. 

(No one knew where darkbending or lightbending came from. Most of the time it was inherited from parent to child, but on rare occasions, it occurred as a mutation in a child. Some liked to say that, on those rare occasions, the parents had been secretly worshiping the long-forgotten deities of darkness and light.)

The Elders wanted his mother gone, so they gave his father a choice: end their lives peacefully on his own terms or they would do so on his behalf. 

His mother, instead, found a third option. 

She had told him to wait in an unused section of the Water Temple until she could fetch him and they could both escape. 

That was a lie, of course. 

Somehow, by some arcane magic, his mother had found a way to suppress his darkbending but at the cost of her own life. 

And that was why his father never called out his name or hugged him. 

The Elders were led to believe that they had purged his body of darkbending once and for all. 

The prophecy, his brother had written, was a lie by what ends still unknown. Or at least, it was not the truth, though the Oracle might have believed it to be so. And the Elders and the rest of the world clearly believed it too. 

His brother would continue to investigate the prophecy and the source of the Cloud, but he hoped that Wangji would choose his own path. 

And one last thing, his brother was beginning to run out of ink, the Oracle made multiple predictions, not all of which were collected and disseminated. She predicted that he would meet a bright young man on his quest and that they would eventually go off on their own journey. 

“That’s… a lot. I’m sorry about your mother.” 

“It was a long time ago, and… for what it’s worth, I do not remember her at all.” He felt an odd disconnect at the thought of her, like the part of him that cared for her had died along with her. 

“Oh, that’s so…” Wei Ying looked pained, red lips contorted in a grimace and brows wrinkled downwards. 

“My brother wrote that she would have liked you.” He stretched out his hand to brush upon Wei Ying’s. 

He flinched and pushed his hand away gently. “...About last night, I’m not sure if this is a good time. We’re on the verge of war and you – you look at me like I’m a god. Like I have all the answers and that I’m the source of all goodness, but I know that I don’t. And you’re… so inexperienced around people, so of course you’d like me. I always tried to flatter you and make you laugh and annoy you, well I do that to everyone, but, even now… I don’t know if it’s just reflex when I say nice things. So, while I really really like you, I don’t know if we should pursue this any further. At least for now.” 

How could the fluttering of his heart be wrong? Uncle always said that they, the Lans, could only love one person in their whole lifetime. So if Wei Ying didn’t… “Can we still be friends?” 

He smiled softly. “Yes, Lan Zhan, let’s be friends. But no kissing and I’ll refrain from trying to charm your pants off.” 

So Wei Ying prattled on about this and that: the shape of a cloud (a squirrel-rabbit!), the way the light hit the tufts of Feifei’s hair just so, the taste of lotus soup that his sister made. And Lan Wangji responded fondly to each remark, although unease grew inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think JYL has some sorta leukemia but like srsly this is a story involving magic elemental wielders soooo scientific accuracy is not the goal here 
> 
> would you believe that this is the smuttiest thing i've ever written in my 20+ years of life??? 
> 
> sorry (not sorry) for WY basically cock-blocking himself at the very end
> 
> thanks for reading/commenting!!!


	10. Just War (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wei Ying and friends & family escape to the swamps. They bicker and an acquaintance appears offering help.

**WY**

Wei Ying should’ve lied. He was this close to kissing the most beautiful person he’d ever seen in his life and he had the audacity to say – _no_?!? He was a fool. Who knew when they would have the time once the war started in earnest? What if Lan Zhan rescued a beautiful maiden from the enemy and decided that he would rather be with her? This was his best shot, and he had turned it down. 

It was for a good reason, of course, but his lower nether regions told him otherwise as he rubbed one out. Lan Zhan was avoiding him, for obvious reasons, so he figured that he’d have privacy if he ventured out into the nearby woods for a late night leak. He, absolutely, under no circumstance, was thinking of glowing white hair and flawless jade-like skin as he did so. Relaxing, he closed his eyes and tried to focus on the heat building underneath his fingers. 

A mosquito landed on his thigh and he opened his eyes reflexively. A glowing figure dashed behind some trees. 

Lan Zhan had seen him. 

Had seen him doing _that_.

He was ready to be buried. Just take him.

* * *

As predicted, the Fire Nation began to patrol the skies of the western edge of the Earth Kingdom periodically with regular sweeps of the land. Fortunately, sky bison were more agile than airships, so if they were spotted and provided there was enough cloud cover, they could easily dip into a nearby cloud formation and be lost to souring eyes. 

Alas, today was not such a fortunate day. There were half a dozen red sleek metallic airships in the sky and not a cloud in sight. The nearest of the ships soared towards them, gaining ground, even as Wei Ying urged Feifei to fly as quickly as possible – but he would never whip her for the gaining of marginal ground. It was futile anyways; hey would catch up within a few breaths of air.

“We need to hide in the swamp now!” Jiang Cheng yelled over the noise of projectiles and fireballs shooting from the airships. 

Hastily, with shaky hands, Wei Ying took the reins and steered Feifei towards the ground – hard. They dipped so quickly and abruptly that their ears popped, uncomfortable pressure accumulating. The sky bison plummeted towards the ground and aimed towards a small pond within the dense mass of tangled vegetation, breaking branches and vines as they dropped until finally, Feifei landed between two thick branches forking outwards in a v-shape that held steady beneath her weight. 

The branches audibly creaked beneath their combined weight, and everyone held their breath, but eventually, nothing happened. “Is everyone fine?” 

Yanli made a head count of everyone and assessed the damage. Luckily, no one had suffered injuries beyond a bruise here and there which could be easily healed. Feifei, however, had exhausted herself on their trip here and needed to rest. Three of her legs were also tightly bound by vines that had… crept onto her body when they weren’t looking. Wei Ying leaned against her and whispered to her, brushing her fur and saying that everything would be alright. 

Never one to read the general mood, Jiang Cheng then fired up some firebending and aimed at the plant matter binding Feifei. She howled in distress and thrashed around, entangling him and dragging him around by the ends of the vines. 

“A-cheng stop! You’re hurting her!” Yanli cut their brother out of the vines and helped him to his feet. 

Even after his efforts, the vines tightened harder around her body, squeezing and constricting them into uncomfortable shapes. Feifei groaned out in pain and Wei Ying glared at Jiang Cheng periodically as he cut the vines methodically with a razor-sharp icicle. Jiang Cheng always had a bad temper and Wei Ying used to like to say that he’d inherited it from his mother which would cause all sorts of complicated emotions on Jiang Cheng’s face. But now? It wasn’t like him to be so easily irritated. 

Under the shade of the swamp forest, they weren’t going to be easily seen by the Fire Nation at least. But how were they going to get Feifei out of these vines? 

“Some of us could stay with her and the rest of us could go out to look for help,” Jiang Cheng offered as he picked away at the vines, two vines seeming to appear to replace each vine cut. Like it had a mind of its own. 

“She’s family I can’t just abandon her, look, she’s scared –” Wei Ying knew Jiang Cheng would never consider leaving A-li like that, so how could he – 

“We’re not abandoning her and we’re not making any progress here –” 

“A-cheng, A-yin, if we could just talk it over,” their sister spoke softly but firmly as she took one of their hands in each of her hands. 

They exchanged a look and turned to face her. Lan Zhan had been sitting there silently the whole time. What was he feeling? Since Wei Ying had told him that they should “just be friends”, they’d been having lovely but also somewhat shallow conversations. Well, actually, it was mostly Wei Ying yammering on about whatever and Lan Zhan nodding and mn-ing in agreement. He seemed more distant now, but that was only to be expected. They hadn’t had much opportunity to talk at all today, what with the whole “running away from the Fire Nation”. 

(Maybe Lan Zhan hadn’t noticed what he was doing last night?)

With Yanli acting as an in-between they discussed options, they later decided to put it up to a vote. 

“Why does he get a vote?” Jiang Cheng hissed as he poked an accusing finger at Lan Zhan. “We barely know him.” 

“Lan Zhan’s a good person. I’ll vouch for him!” Wei Ying was ready to throw hands for him. Out of the corner of his eyes, Lan Zhan’s head tilted towards Wei Ying’s direction before quickly turning away again. 

“And you wouldn’t be the first nor the last person to have their judgment clouded by – ahem – the fragrant flower in front of their eyes.” 

“Wei Ying… and I are not together,” Lan Zhan cut in, sounding slightly dejected which made Wei Ying’s heart twinge. 

You could be together with that beautiful man, he told himself. You could be listening to that low reverberating voice sing a song as you sat in his lap. But no, you wanted to be the gentleman, and focus on the war. 

It was the right thing to do, of course. 

“Not together – how gullible do you think I am? The two of you spend all of your time staring into each other’s eyes, so how am I supposed to believe – wait.” Jiang Cheng scowled with a clenched jaw, his face turning into a blade. “Are you messing around with him for fun? Is that it? Or do you think he’s not good enough for you –” 

“A-cheng...”

“We just decided now wasn’t a good time, that’s all,” Wei Ying said trying to project his best “big brother” voice. “We need to focus on the war.” 

“Sure, but I still don’t like you,” Jiang Cheng said as he glared at Lan Zhan again. He jumped down to the floor of the forest and began doing his morning calisthenics. 

“Don’t take it to heart,” Yanli said to Lan Zhan with a pained smile. “He takes a while to warm up to anyone, but if you get his trust, he’s the most loyal person I know. But, I do think he needs some cheering up.” She swooped down from the sky bison’s harness and carried herself down the vine-covered tree on the back of a moving mass of ice. 

And now they were alone. Oh no. 

“Say, Lan Zhan, about yesterday…” Wei Ying spoke in the quietest voice possible, almost as though he was talking to himself. Sweat collected along his neck and various folds of his body, making the whole experience unbearably uncomfortable. 

“This swamp… There’s something different about it,” Lan Zhan said as he examined a vine that he was holding in his hands. “I can feel everything so much more clearly here from the smallest insect to the mightiest tree.” The humidity made sweat glisten beautifully on his face. 

Lan Zhan hadn’t heard a thing he had said. 

“So about last night...” Wei Ying began. 

Lan Zhan turned away, but his ears were visibly red. “It was my fault. I should have realized that you had left the campsite last night and that you were… preoccupied elsewhere.” He swished one of his robe’s large pale blue sleeves. “There is nothing else that we need to say about the matter.” 

Oh, had Lan Zhan become let down by Wei Ying for having base, animal-like urges? The Lan Clan were well-known for their ascetic lifestyle. They were probably taught to limit any kinds of sexual activity for procreation and improving their bending. 

“...Are you disappointed in me?” Wei Ying asked in a small voice, so unlike himself. 

“Disappointed? Why would I be disappointed?” 

The version of Lan Zhan that Wei Ying had first met would have surely given him an earful on proper conduct of oneself, given him a long and detailed lecture on how to curb desire (probably involving eating copious amounts of flavorless food), but that was then. 

“I just – it’s bit unseemly, to be seen doing that, that’s all.” One sweltering summer, in the throes of puberty, Wei Ying had taken to getting handsy in a particularly far-off seldom used room in an unused wing. Which was all fine and dandy – until he realized all the servant girls giggled or ran away whenever they were around him and that the walls of the room were very, very thin. 

“It… was a moderately shocking sight for me. But forgive me, I must confess that it was I who followed you, first out of curiosity, and then… not.” 

_Oh._ He felt blood rush up his face. “You’re forgiven! Now let’s get down and get Jiang Cheng getting away with you.” 

The Bearer of Light nodded and they made their way down to the swamp floor as well. After much persuasion (and fervent promises of extra helpings of lotus root soup), Jiang Cheng grunted out that he could tentatively accept Lan Zhan’s presence. 

The vines finally loosened enough that Feifei jumped down to the floor of the forest, a large splash ringing out as she jumped into a large puddle. 

And from the swamp’s fogs, an unidentified man in the robes of an Earth Kingdom villager emerged. 

“Wen Ning,” Jiang Cheng growled as twin jets of flame erupted from his fists. Of course he’d remember. 

Many years ago, Jiang Cheng and Wei Ying had been sent to the Fire Nation for an international archery competition. This was during a brief lull in national tensions. Wei Ying, naturally, hadn’t practiced (too much) and won handily for his age group. It was a pity that Lan Zhan hadn’t participated; he’d heard so much of him. 

Wei Ying came upon Wen Ning practicing archery with such finesse and power – of course, he wasn’t better than Wei Ying himself, but he came close. They’d exchanged pleasantries and archery tips and a promise that the other might visit the other’s home. 

That had been, what, six or seven years ago? 

“Sir Wei… I just want to help,” Wen Ning said meekly, head lowered. 

“Sounds like a trap! What are you doing here?” 

“I heard that you were somewhere here from listening to the radios. I saw you two from one of the airships and convinced the captain to dock near here while I snuck out disguised as a villager. Please! My side of the family doesn’t agree with what the Fire Lord’s doing, and I want to help! I can help smuggle you to wherever you want to go.” 

“So you’re a traitor to your own family.” 

“I… only happen to be related to the Fire Lord. I didn’t ask for it.” 

Wen Ning’s heart rate was a little elevated – probably due to talking to Jiang Cheng – but he didn’t seem to be lying. Still, it was common enough for soldiers to be trained to lie without elevating their heart rate, so it wasn’t a foolproof method. 

“How did you find us?” 

“...I…This might sound strange but the swamp led me here. I walked in and saw visions – terrible visions! – and then I was walking up to where you were. It’s like the swamp can see inside me, inside my head.” 

Jiang Cheng insisted on standing on guard for Wen Ning as he detailed a plan for smuggling them out of the Fire Nation. His family was mostly medics but a few people also worked on field logistics for the war. They could make a quick stop-over in the local Fire Nation outpost where his sister was in charge and exit inside barrels and under piles of hay. 

“What about Feifei?” 

Wen Ning figured that they could disguise her as a beast of burden that pulled wagons of cargo. Perhaps her fur could be trimmed in places and painted over so that she could appear as an ox bison? 

It wasn’t a perfect plan, but from Wen Ning’s words, the coastal villages were crawling with Fire Nation troops. 

They finally came upon the edge of the forest where the trees thinned into bushes. The local village was medium-sized and had a well-built wall. Wei Ying called upon a starling just flying by and looked into its eyes as it swooped over the village. 

Two Earth Kingdom soldiers knocked on a local home. The door and roofing was much more dilapidated than any home that Wei Ying had ever lived in. It looked on the verge of caving in and was being held together with haphazard repairs with subpar material. The wood was rotting in places and the places the nails were hammered in weren’t optimal. 

A family with four thin children came out.

“Ma’am, we’re here to investigate your home for contraband. We also heard reports that you were selling your wares to the Fire Nation soldiers. Please stand aside, by the decree of the King!”

“Of course, right away here. May the King live a long and prosperous life.” 

The mother welcomed the soldiers into their home; she smiled widely with closed eyes. The children went out into the streets lethargically with no energy and they passed a thatched ball between them. They didn’t talk much. The woman’s smile died as she turned around to scan the streets before going back in. The soldiers entered the home and the woman closed the door behind them quietly. 

Wei Ying pushed the starling to the roof – also rotting – of a nearby home for an angle that allowed him to peer through the window. 

The window was closed, but the walls of the home was still thin enough for him to hear. “As you can see, we only have these few possessions. Please be gentle with them.” 

Words were only wind to the soldiers. They shattered the few dishes that the family owned and rummaged through their furniture and then –

Someone cried out in sharp pain and bodies crumpled to the ground. 

Did the soldiers find something and decide to bring the family in for questioning? But no, that wasn’t official protocol. They were supposed to be brought in for questioning in handcuffs. 

And then the sound of digging. “Make sure to grab their identification tags. They said that we can’t join them, unless we have it.” 

They? 

“Do you think it’s true what they say over there? That the streets are paved with gold and no one goes hungry, not even the poorest beggar.” 

“I’m sure it’s an exaggeration, but it certainly can’t be worse than what we already have.” 

“If they win this war, then my poor wife will have to get used to spicy food,” a man teased his wife. 

And they laughed. 

This Earth Kingdom family was helping the Fire Nation, and at first, Wei Ying thought it was an outlier, but as he flew over the village, he saw that it wasn’t. There were little children who pelted passing Earth Kingdom soldiers with rocks and darted away giggling. Someone “accidentally” dropped yesterday’s chamber pot’s contents onto a soldier’s head. Teenage boys stole openly from the soldier’s supplies for themselves. Angry graffiti dotted the walls of the village decrying the Earth King in a thousand ways. 

The village was, overall, on the poorer side. He couldn’t say that they were at the point of starvation. The nearby swamp and lakes provided sources of food. But they were poor and the clothing they were wearing threadbare and their homes rotting and almost to the point of collapsing. 

So, Wei Ying, as a cherished son of prosperous Yunmeng couldn’t bring himself to condemn them for turning away from the Earth Kingdom and joining with the Fire Nation. Quickly, his mind raced to all sorts of questions: were there many Fire Nation sympathizers throughout the entire Kingdom? How would this affect retaking Yunmeng? Was there any way to get these rebels onto their side? 

And, on some level, were they just doing what their circumstances dictated? The best they could do to improve their situation. 

And if they were ultimately justified, or partially at least, then what was he doing, fighting against them? 

Where did that leave him?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> soooo i'm not dead!!! just started a new job & trying to figure ~my future~ out  
> this chapter... i do not like it. but here it is!!! 
> 
> tbh, probably could've smushed both parts of this chapter into one chapter but i really wanted to get something out. did i mention this is like the fourth time i've rehauled my outline??? 
> 
> welp, enjoy? & kudos/comments will be much appreciated


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